College and Research Libraries 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 range, university adult education can play a meaningful role only by rigorously defin- ing its distinctive place, by setting a limit to the tasks that it will undertake and an order of priority among them." (page 129). University administrators, working with the National University Extension Associa- tion, face some difficult decisions as adult educational needs continue to multiply. If the decision is to concentrate university adult education programs at the "college level" (and financial support may dictate this de- cision in view of the special function of uni- versities in the field of higher education) then the public library, as "the people's uni- versity," undoubtedly will be expected to assume, with other agencies, major respon- sibility for adult education. T h e role of the universities, other than university adult edu- cation as defined by the Petersens, may well be limited to assisting and nurturing other agencies through leadership training, prep- aration and dissemination of educational ma- terials, applied research, and consultation. " F o r a richer, fuller life, wake up and read" is a fine slogan for a National Li- brary Week. T h e Petersens' book is the kind of reading that should "wake up" librarians to the kinds of problems and decisions they may be facing soon in the field of adult edu- cation.—Eugene H. Wilson, University of Colorado. Fifty Years Old Search and Research; the Collections and Uses of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. By William K. Zinaser. New York: T h e New York Public Library, 1961. 46p. $1.00 paper, $3.00 bound. Written and published to mark the fif- tieth anniversary of the New York Public Library, this handsome little book is ad- dressed to a wide lay audience, and exem- plifies the best sort of public-relations pamphleteering. Necessarily superficial, be- cause it covers a vast subject in small com- pass, with reliance on anecdote and vignette to suggest complexity rather than on ex- haustive description which might be more accurate if more dull, it nevertheless con- tains little tidbits of information interesting to even the most blase librarian already con- vinced that here is one of the very greatest libraries of the world. If a fault must be found, it may lie in the fact that nowhere in this work, or in other anniversary litera- ture this reviewer has seen, has it seemed pertinent to mention the name and identify the contribution of John Shaw Billings, the library's great founder.—Frank B. Rogers, National Library of Medicine. African, Chinese Sources • A new bibliographical guide listing more than two thousand titles of periodical publica- tions concerned with Africa has just been published by the Library of Congress. Entitled Serials for African Studies (1961, 163 p.), it was compiled by Helen F. Conover of the Li- brary's Africana Section. T h e serial titles listed in the new guide represent institutional serials—such as journals, annual reports, and memoirs—as well as independent magazines published in Africa and abroad. T h e list is based on the library's earlier Research and Information on Africa, Con- tinuing Sources (1954), but—unlike it—includes a variety of ephemeral publications in Western and African languages, processed newsletters and bulletins of current information, and missionary journals and magazines, which, although not devoted exclusively to Afri- can affairs, carry articles on Africa frequently enough to be of value for research. T h e entries include information on holdings in the Library of Congress or other Amer- ican libraries, addresses of publishers not readily available, and, in some cases, notes de- scribing content. T h e publication is for sale by the Government Printing Office at $f.00 a copy. N O V E M B E R 1 9 6 1 485