College and Research Libraries


In Books that Changed the World Mr. 
Downs said: "In view of the extreme diffi-
culty as to readability of perhaps a rna jority 
of titles on the select list, this question may 
reasonably be asked: How could these works 
exert influence on any except a narrow band 
of specialists? ... Their influence, accord-
ingly, has resulted from interpretation by 
experts." I would ask another question: in 
view of the extreme difficulty of under-
standing many of the books that have molded 
our modern consciousness, and the equally 
extreme difficulty of finding time to read 
them, isn't it better to read Mr. Downs's 
lucid summaries than to fail to read most of 
the originals?-Katharine M. Stokes, Western 
Michigan University, Kalamazoo. 

A Regional Survey 
College, University and Special Libraries of 

the Pacific Northwest. Edited by Morton 
Kroll. (Pacific Northwest Library Associa-
tion Development Project Reports, Volume 
III). Seattle, University of Washington 
Press, 1961. x, 310p. $6.75. 

This study, volume three of the reports 
of the Pacific Northwest Library Association 
Development Project, consists of two parts. 
Its first third covers college and university 
libraries, while the remaining two-thirds 
presents surveys of three types of special li-
braries: legal, medical and federal. In both 
cases the geographical coverage is the four 
states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and 
Montana and the province of British Colum-
bia. Only three of the six chapters ("Policy 
Making and Control in College and Univer-
sity Libraries," "The Academic Library and 
the Community: A Study of Relationships 
between Public and Academic Libraries in 
the Pacific Northwest," and "The Federal 
Library in the Pacific Northwest") have 
individual authors; teams of two ("The Re-
search Function of College and University 
Libraries in the Pacific Northwest"), four 
("The Law Libraries of the Pacific North-
west") , and six ("The Medical Libraries of 
the Pacific Northwest") prepared the other 
three chapters. 

The first of the three chapters on college 

354 

and university libraries provides an excellent 
view of the structure of policy making. The 
author first considers policy making within 
the library and then examines relations with 
nonlibrary groups. The writer, a political 
scientist, concludes that the most effective 
forms and procedures of administration are 
those which keep open the channels of com-
munications. He also emphasizes that pro-
cedures are no better than the men who use 
them-certainly a plea for more competent 
and qualified administrators. Students of 
library management, take heed! 

The next chapter explores the library's 
role in research. Although a discussion of 
resources devotes one paragraph to listing 
some special strengths of the area's libraries, 
the writers point out that "highly reliable 
knowledge of the actual state of the collec-
tions in the various fields throughout the 
region must await more exact and extensive 
surveys." Not mentioned is the fact that a 
new edition of John Van Male's Resources 
of Pacific Northwest Libraries (1943) could 
accomplish this. The claim of the authors to 
concentrate "on four selected fields: physical 
sciences, social sciences, biological sciences, 
and hum ani ties" puzzles this reviewer, since 
most scholars would think of these areas as 
embracing all of the disciplines within the 
liberal arts and sciences, excluding only the 
various professional fields of law, medicine, 
architecture, etc. After brief consideration of 
finance, services, and facilities the chapter 
concludes with twelve "tentative recom-
mendations" ranging from more efforts to 
develop collections and to fill gaps to an 
"improved system for controlling the time 
of binding journals." 

Perhaps the most striking thought left 
with the reader of Carlson's study of the 
academic library and the community is not 
the lack of examples of a combined public-
college library service but the lack of interest 
in experimenting with it. He offers the ex-
planation that, in spite of "a great deal of 
effective though informal cooperation" be-
tween the two types, "the definite feeling 
persists that each ... has its own clientele." 

The reader of the chapters which form 
part one needs to bear in mind that each has 
a somewhat different scope. The first does 
not indicate how many libraries it covers, 
but the examples tend to draw on the larger 
academic libraries. Chapter 2 is based pri-
marily on nine institutions (the universities 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, 
Idaho, and :Montana and the Washington, 
Oregon, Idaho, and Montana state colleges). 
For chapter 3 the author draws on replies to 
letters of inquiry and visits to Portland, 
Seattle, and Vancouver. He also presents 
statistics giving volumes and enrollment or 
population for 87 public and academic li-
braries. One would like to have seen further 
data of this nature on finance, personnel, 
building, and services incorporated into chap-
ter 2; without it, the reader finds it difficult 
adequately to assess the "tentative recom-
mendations" proposed. 

In the survey of law libraries there are 
sections dealing with conditions in each of 
the four states and in the province. The 
nature and extent of resources and their 
availability to the practicing lawyer receive 
most attention. The authors point out that 
the statutes, reports, digest, and citators of 
a lawyer's own and of the federal or domin-
ion jurisdictions, which are adequate for 
matters subject to statutory regulation or for 
matters litigated earlier in the jurisdiction, 
prove deficient for cases involving other 
states or for cases of first impression. This is 
especially true in rural areas; a three-way 
program of improvement at the state level 
is suggested: a central lending library, a 
union list of recommended legal treatises and 
a traveling librarian "to organize, weed, set 
up subscription and purchasing systems ... , 
to organize methods of circulation control 
and to train clerical assistants." 

The longest chapter in the book and that 
which presents the most detailed information 
covers medical libraries. Parallel to the 
treatment of law libraries, there are sections 
analyzing the present situation in the region's 
four states and province. Thirty-three tables 
following the text present a wealth of back-
ground data on collections, budgets, sources 
of funds, staff salaries and benefits, buildings 
and equipment, and services. These data 
not only give many basic facts in detail but 
provide supporting evidence for the general 
conclusion that medical libraries and li-
brary service, like their legal counterparts, 
are inadequate. The suggested solution dif-
fers in being one of approach on the regional 
rather than the state basis-perhaps because 
the universality of the health sciences con-
trasts with the special nature of each legal 
jurisdiction. 

The author of the final chapter, on the 

JULY 1962 

federal library, first outlines the national 
library systems of several United States gov-
ernment departments (e.g., Air Force, Vet-
erans Administration) and then draws a gen-
eral picture of the federal librarian, the 
mission and status of the library, its patrons, 
its collections, and its relations. with other li-
braries. The Canadian federal library re-
ceives briefer treatment. 

The book is well-printed by photo-offset, 
with notes appearing at the end. Several small 
improvements might be suggested: all tables 
might have been numbered consecutively and 
listed after the table of contents to avoid the 
necessity of flipping pages when trying to 
locate a table for the second time; moreover, 
the thirty-three tables supplementing the 
chapter on medical libraries appear on pages 
245-70, none of which carries a page number! 
In the index, all subjects covered in the last 
chapter have apparently blind references, 
unless one realizes that he should add 26 to 
the page given (e.g., 259 becomes 285). Prob-
ably it was not originally intended to publish 
the 33 tables on medical libraries; when they 
were inserted between chapters 5 and 6 no 
changes were made in page references to 
chapter 6. 

After the reader has finished this interest-
ing survey, several questions are likely to 
remain with him. What is to be the future 
role of the Pacific Northwest Bibliographic 
Center? It receives only passing mention in 
the text, figures in three recommendations. 
and has four entries in the index. What about 
other special libraries in the region? In spite 
of the title of the survey it covers only three 
groups of special libraries. 

Although one can agree with the editor's 
statement that "the enormous diversity of 
medical and law libraries, and the variation 
in research collections presented a greater 
problem than any one individual could cover 
in the relatively brief period of time avail-
able to the project to accomplish its work," 
nevertheless it seems to this reader that each 
of the six chapters stands more as an indi-
vidual study than as part of an integrated 
whole. An over-all concluding and synthe-
sizing chapter might have, at least partially, 
avoided this impression. 

The volume contains twenty-five specific 
recommendations (twelve for college and 
university libraries, six for medical and 
seven for federal) . In the long run the re-
port's importance will probably depend on 

355 



how much it stimulates librarians to accept 
and to act on these recommendations.-
William Vernon jackson, Graduate School 
of Library Science, University of Illinois. 

Shelf Classification 
American Library Classification, with Speczal 

Reference to the Library of Congress. By 
Leo E. LaMontagne. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe 
String Press, 1961. 443p. $9.50. 

This volume by Leo LaMontagne is as 
much biographical as it is historical. After 
an introductory section on Thomas Jeffer-
son and the Library of Congress, a chapter 
is concerned with the work of Socrates, Plato, 
Callimachus, Thabanus Maurus, Avicenna, 
and others of the early period. LaMontagne 
notes the various ways in the approach to 
knowledge-the similarities and differences. 
"I have taken all knowledge to be my pro-
vince," Bacon wrote to Lord Burghley in 
1592 (p. 82). Knowledge has gone a long 
way since Bacon divided it into two parts: 
human knowledge (from the sense) , and 
theology (from revelation). This section is 
interesting but adds little to the direct de-
velopment of the basic theme, a discussion of 
the Library of Congress classification. 

Duncan Campbell, a Boston bookseller, 
issued the first book classification in the 
United States-a sales catalog published in 
1693-according to LaMontagne. The catalog 
dealt with the library of Samuel Lee, and 
the books were listed by language, size, and 
subject. The first classification used in Amer-
ican libraries was the arrangement of reli-
ious topics contained in Bibliotheca Paro-
chialis of the Reverend Thomas Bray, is-
sued in London in 1697. Bray's classification 
of religion contained ten main divisions and 
many subdivisions. The 1723 Harvard Col-
lege arrangement (developed by Joshua 
Gee), the 1703 (?) classification of William 
Proctor for the William Byrd Collection, 
the 1731 essay of Samuel Johnson (of Guil-
ford, Connecticut) on the classification of 
knowledge, and the 1743 classified catalog 
of Thomas Clap at Yale College are described 
by LaMontagne. In summary of these early 
arrangements, the author writes: "The classi-

356 

fications thus far described reveal that Amer-
ican library classification, like the culture of 
which it forms a part, was both derivative 
and original." 

How classification grew from simple to 
complex arrangements is shown in the de-
velopment of the scheme ( 1764) for The 
Redwood Library, in Newport, Rhode Is-
land, prepared by the Reverend Ezra Stiles, 
who later became president of Yale College. 
This arrangement was similar to the simple 
scheme of divisions in the catalog of Samuel 
Lee's library. Further steps in the road to 
complexity include the classified catalog of 
the Library Company of Philadelphia (1789), 
supposed to have been compiled by Zechariah 
Poulson, Jr.; the classification of T. M. 
Harris at Harvard College (1793); the 1816 
classifications of A. E. B. Woodward (who 
developed the so-called "Catholepistemia") 
and of Jeremy Bentham (who developed 
his Chrestomathia). LaMontagne states that 
Woodward's system, destined for oblivion, 
contained much in the development of laws 
of classification-such "laws" as compre-
hensiveness, logical division, correlation of 
subjects, approach from the simple to the 
complex, clear definition of coverage by 
subjects, clear definition of relationship be-
tween subjects, appropriate terminology, and 
the absence of excessive subdivision. The 
1821 Harvard College classification, the 1824 
clasification of the American Philosophical 
Society, the system of the Charleston Society 
Library (1826), the introduction of the 
Brunet system at Harvard in 1830, and the 
classifications used at the Library Company 
of Philadelphia, the New York Society 
Library, Cambridge (Massachusetts) High 
School, and the U.S. Military Academy at 
West Point are reviewed, as well as the con-
tributions of Roswell Park, S. Hastings Grant, 
and Romain Merlin. 

The major contribution of this work is 
the discussion of the development of the Li-
brary of Congress classification (chapters 
XIII-XVIII). The immediate usefulness of 
this volume, so long as there is not available 
a detailed guide to the Library of Congress 
classification, will be primarily the descrip-
tion of the various schedules. The develop-
ment and suggestions for the future of this 
system are considered. However, there is 
limited analysis of the pecularities of the 
separate classes. There appears still to be a 
need for a thorough and detailed manual on 

COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES