College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 

Sound Building Advice 
Planning the College and University Library 

Buildings: A Book for Campus Planners 
and Architects. By Ralph E. Ellsworth. 
Boulder, Colo.: T h e Author, 1961. 102p. 
$5.00. 

Ralph Ellsworth has published a very use-
ful and timely book which should prove to 
be of considerable value to officials of col-
leges and universities who are planning new 
library buildings. And there are a great many 
new buildings now in the planning stage. 
This short book covers every facet of the 
planning process. It does not attempt to de-
scribe in detail all parts of a library building. 
Ellsworth has kept the various types of read-
ers in mind throughout. This includes li-
brarians who are familiar and those who are 
unfamiliar with library building planning 
problems. He has also kept constantly in 
mind architects of both types—those who 
have had library building experience and 
those who have not. Although he assumes 
nothing—or at last very little—on the part 
of the reader, he nevertheless manages not 
to offend the intelligence of the oriented. 

It is well written, and although Ellsworth 
claims that the book is a "personal" docu-
ment, he has remained extremely objective 
in nine-tenths of the book. 

Readers of reviews on library-building 
books may grow weary of being constantly 
reminded that Keyes Metcalf is working on 
a definitive book for college and university 
library buildings. Nevertheless, it is neces-
sary to bear this in mind; all of us (and this 
includes Ellsworth) should and do remain 
aware of that fact. T here are a lot of unan-
swered questions which we hope die Metcalf 
book will answer. It may be several years 
before that book is completed, but meanwhile 
there are millions of dollars worth of academic 
library structures which must be planned, 
and I am sure others will share my en-
thusiasm for Ellsworth's having gone ahead 
with this excellent publication, since it gives 
planners so much sound direction and ad-
vice. 

T h e author has a fine sense of what is 
generally accepted and what is an exception. 
This is most important, especially when the 
book is to be used by people without ex-
perience. He faithfully points out in each 
case what he considers an Ellsworth idea as 
compared to generally accepted practice. If 
he had not done this, the book could be dan-
gerous in that his own ideas on library opera-
tion and building might be assumed by the 
uninitiated to the standard practice. Some 
readers of course will want to adopt the ex-
ception, but they should know when they 
are doing s o . — W i l l i a m H. Jesse, University 
of Tennessee Library. 

T h e First Freedom 
The First Freedom: Liberty and Justice in 

the World of Books and Reading. Edited 
by Robert B. Downs. Chicago: ALA, 1960. 
xiii, 469p. $8.50. 

Robert B. Downs has brought together a 
fascinating and masterful anthology of recent 
writings on the censorship of books. T h e 
opening and closing sections present a broad 
definition of issues in the perspective of his-
tory and of the future. Other chapters pre-
sent the principal judicial opinions on the 
censorship of books, a variety of writings on 
private pressure groups, studies of the prob-
lem of defining obscenity, essays on political 
censorship, collections of statements by au-
thors and writers' groups and by librarians 
and library associations, a group of essays on 
the censorship of textbooks, and two illumi-
nating assemblages of writings on censorship 
in Ireland and under Fascism and Commu-
nism. 

T h e editor has chosen to confine his selec-
tions to British (including Irish) and Ameri-
can writings since 1900 and to those dealing 
specifically with the censorship of books. 
Within those limitations this search has been 
thorough and his selections admirable. Many 
of the selections are conveniently available 
nowhere else; all of them benefit from being 

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