College and Research Libraries


Readex Microprint Publications 1950-1960. 
[New York: Readex Microprint Corp., n.d.J 
47p. On request. 

This year is the tenth anniversary of the 
first publications of the Readex Microprint 
Corporation. Since June 1950 they have is-
sued "more than 250,000 titles" on Micro~ 
print cards. This catalogue lists their publi-
cations by major categories, and includes a 
five-page index to help locate inclusive sub-
ject headings within these wide groupings. 

Southwestern Newspapers on Microfilm. Dal-
las, Tex.: Microfilm Service & Sales Co. 
(P. 0. Box 8066), [n.d.J 62p. On request. 

Five states in the southwestern region of 
the United States (Arkansas, Louisiana, New 
Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) cover a wide 
area with Dallas roughly at its center. This 
catalogue lists some four hundred publica-
tions (or approximately twenty million filmed 
pages) microfilmed in this area. The ar-
rangement is by state, broken down alpha-
betically by city. Coverage in Louisiana is 
very slight. Also listed are holdings of the 
Oklahoma Historical Society and the Arkan-
sas History Commission. Queries about these 
items should be directed to them and not 
to the publisher.-Hubbard W. Ballou ) Pho-
tographic Services) Columbia University Li-
braries. 

Studies in Cataloging 
and Classification 
Cataloging and Classification. By Maurice F. 

Tauber. Subject Headings. By Carlyle J. 
Frarey. (The State of the Library Art, Vol. 
1, Parts l-2) Ed. by Ralph R. Shaw. New 
Brunswick: Rutgers University Graduate 
School of Library Service, 1960. 271, 92 p. 

This is part of the series forming Dean 
Ralph Shaw's review of "perhaps forty per-
cent of the entire range of librarianship and. 
bibliography," and it is a grand job. The 

NOVEMBER 1960 

task of surveying the literature has been 
well done. The "state of the art" is clearly 
and comprehensively presented. The evalua-
tion of this state is penetrating. And the 
consequent proposals for research projects 
are the sound result of mature understand-
ing. 

One example from the first section of the 
book may help describe the method of these 
studies. The literature on the question of a 
divided catalog is summarized in five pages 
and the evaluation is then: 

Do the studies aid a librarian in making 
a decision in regard to the division of 
the catlog for a particular library? The 
answer must be no, unless a particular 
library catalog is examined in relation 
to particular groups of users. It would 
seem that . what evidence is available 
supports division for almost any catalog 
of any size. The presence of guesswork 
and rationalization, however, suggests 
that further study of the arrangement of 
the catalog is desirable. 

As a consequence, three proposals are made 
for further study-one a statistical study of 
entry duplication in divided catalogs of vari-
ous sizes; a second to test a three-way split 
into authors, subjects, and titles; and the 
third an experiment in the horizontal di-
vision of the catalog by date periods. Later, 
in a summary chapter entitled "Program for 
the future," a fourth study is proposed to de-
termine the administrative efficiency of filing 
in a divided catalog. The author expresses 
conviction that division of catalogs may lead 
"to the harmonious shift to printed catalogs 
for subjects for older portions of the collec-
tion"; and similarly penetrating observations 
are made under the other topics discussed. 

The author's proposals for research proj-
ects were the motivation for the CLR grant: 
"The Council early considered the possibili-
ties for basic research in library problems. 
A necessary preliminary step appeared to be 
a listing of the problems and a survey of the 
present state of knowledge regarding them 
in order to permit a selection of topics offer-
ing promise to investigation." This book sug-
gests eighty-five of these topics in cataloging. 
They include seven each in the areas of de-
scriptive cataloging, classification, "collec-
tanea" files, and documents; and a lesser 

497