College and Research Libraries Review Articles Important Memoirs Mitchell of California: The Memoirs of Syd- ney B. Mitchell, Librarian, Teacher, Gard- ener, with a preface by Lawrence Clark Powell; Berkeley, California Library As- sociation, 1960. Illus. 263 p. $5.00. At one point (p. 178) Sydney Mitchell writes, "Since my eighteenth year I have spent my life in universities. I have been on the staff of four of these. I have taught in summer schools at others, have been a visit- ing fellow at still another, and in my inves- tigations of library service, I have been for a longer or shorter time at two or three dozen more." Certainly he got about and, as a consequence, flung high a constellation of students who continue to shine and twinkle in the firmament. These reminiscences are his response to their devoted insistence. He never found time to finish them; formally they break off with an account of the early years of his Berkeley experience, but that interruption is gently compensated for by an appended interview which he gave to Neal Harlow and Andrew Horn at Grizzly Peak on a Feb- ruary afternoon in 1950. Cora R. Brandt has added an account of his horticultural ac- complishments; Betty Rosenberg has com- piled an admirable bibliography, Lawrence Clark Powell has contributed the explana- tory preface. From these pages emerges with extraordi- nary fullness the story of a man who, in his youth, "never . . . met a real librarian," who began his career at the paltry salary of twenty dollars a month, and who neverthe- less came to exert (the words are Dean Powell's) "more influence in western library work than any person since James L. Gillis." There are nostalgic, evocative chapters on the Montreal of his youth, on McGill Uni- versity in the Stephen Leacock period, on the milieu and minions of the library school at Albany, on Stanford in the days when President Jordan played first base on the faculty team, on the shaping of a Califor- nian. And there is Edmund Lester Pearson's prescription for a perfect charging system: "Attendant picks reader's pocket, stamps on reader's foot, and files reader's teeth." Mitchell was a great innovator, unafraid of change, unawed by the dicta and the cher- ished practices and the petty pretension of his elders, indifferent to tradition, always eager to grow with the growing world around him. But he was without malice; the only hatred he betrayed was directed toward accession books! He was a magnificent teacher and this was, perhaps, because he was first and unwaveringly a magnificent human being. His memoirs are important for this reason and for the more obvious reason that they are inseparably a part of the history of education for librarianship.— David C. Mearns, Library of Congress. Classification Schemes Guide to the SLA Loan Collection of Classic fication Schemes and Subject Heading Lists on Deposit at Western Reserve Uni- versity as of March 20, 1961. Compiled by Bertha R. Barden and Barbara Denison. 5th ed. (New York: Special Libraries As- sociation, 1961.) 97p. $4.00. In our data-packed, highly specialized so- ciety, the organization of information into manageable form presents a problem not only to libraries, but also to advertising agencies, textile manufacturers, banks, and sugar planters—to name just a few. T h e sys- tem devised by one group to control its ma- terial may solve the problem of another. Since 1924, the Special Classifications Com- mittee of SLA has conducted a "share-the- wealth" program for such systems by build- ing a collection of classification schemes and subject heading lists through contributions from SLA Divisions, ASLIB, UNESCO, and many special, university, and public libraries throughout the world. T h e present edition of the Guide to the collection describes 788 classification schemes and other systems for the organization of special collections, 210 more than were listed N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 1 483 in the forth edition. Items are arranged alphabetically under approximately 350 sub- ject headings; the proportion of subject headings to schemes indicates the compilers' attention to accurate, specific delineation of subject areas. There is a cross-referenced subject index, as well as two appendices. T h e first appendix lists book numbers; the second gives classification expansions and revisions of Dewey decimal, Library of Con- gress, universal decimal, and punched card systems. T h e Guide is cumulative, retaining the citations of earlier lists in company with their new editions and revisions. T h e increased cost of this fifth edition is at least partly justified by the much im- proved format, typography, and general qual- ity of the publication. Better page layout and much more legible characters make the publication easier to use. Some users of the earlier edition have mentioned their appreciation of the symbols which serve to identify some items more fully, or, in other cases, to give their loca- tion. T h a t certain lists are terminologies, subject subdivisions, or uniterms seems self- evident to the reviewer scanning these keyed citations. T h e United States Air Force's Glossary of Terms Used in Air Force Comp- troller Activities is readily identified as a terminology, while publications bearing titles like Cumulative Subject Heading List or List of Subject Headings declare themselves without ambiguity. (The symbols are, of course, justified in the relatively few cases where titles are misleading or inaccurate.) T h e choice of subject headings within the Guide is entirely acceptable once the reader recognizes that the compilers have selected them on a firmly pragmatic basis—that is, on the basis of the subject covered by the par- ticular classification scheme or subject head- ing list in hand—rather than, as with a pre- structured list of subject headings, in accord with the terms and relationships of a desig- nated field of knowledge. T h e see-also refer- ences in the body of the Guide and the cross- references in its index provide generously for the inevitable differences in choice of word or word-order, although the simple di- rectness of subject headings selected preclude much misunderstanding. Some specialists may question the fact that a search for Health (see also Industrial Hygiene, Mental Hygiene) leads only at length to Medicine, rather than immediately —and delay may result in the postponement of health. Such indirections, however, are no formidable problem while the Guide is still of manageable length. (Less of a quibble, perhaps, is the complaint that the see-also references under Medicine do not include Space Medicine.) T h e materials listed in the Guide may be borrowed on a four-week loan for original material, or by photocopy or microfilm for permanent retention.—Ann R. Lindsay, Na- tional Library of Medicine. Adult Education University Adult Education: A Guide to Policy. By Renee Petersen and William Petersen. New York: Harper 8c Brothers, 1960. 288 pp. $5.50. This is an interesting, provocative, and disturbing book which should be read and pondered not only by university librarians but also by the librarians of public libraries, large and small. It provides a clear, critical, and detached analysis of a field of education which is directly related to libraries. T h e authors are concerned with university adult education, which appears to be but a small part of the total adult education field, but they begin by looking at the significance of adult education today and the general principles and problems involved. T h e first two chapters will be of particular interest to librarians. T h e function of university adult educa- tion, in the opinion of the Petersens, is "edu- cation (and legitimately, though usually to a small degree, research); it is not making money or public relations or social service or therapy or recreation." And they make it ('ear that they mean college-level education. "University adult education constitutes no more than about four per cent of adult edu- cation as a whole. It is one sector of a vast, amorphous institution, in which universities, junior colleges, public schools, government bureaus, community agencies, and private organizations engage in recreational, voca- tional, remedial, cultural, and educational activities of every type, at every level, for every purpose. Within this all but infinite 484 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S