College and Research Libraries


ing mass of information into a limited 
space." Only three million more words are 
used in the Britannica today than in 1929, 
an amazing fact when one realizes that, in 
the sciences alone, more research has been 
done since 1950 than in all the years before. 

What is the answer? To Einbinder it is 
the establishment of a new major encyclo-
pedia. Whether this is possible or practical, 
the author and all users of the Encyclopae-
dia Britannica hope that the editors will take 
effective measures to improve this refer-
ence work.-Margaret Knox Goggin, Uni-
versity of Florida. 

Information Storage and Retrieval: Tools, 
Elements, Theories. By Joseph Becker 
and Robert M. Hayes. New York: Wiley, 
c1963. xi, 448p. $11.95. (63-12279). 

Messrs. Becker and Hayes have written 
the most useful book in English on the sub-
ject of information storage and retrieval 
(ISR). The text is carefully organized, the 
various ISR methods are clearly and ac-
curately described, and the selected illustra-
tions contribute to a better understanding 
of equipment and principles. 

The authors are particularly well qualified 
by training, experience, and interest to write 
this book, for in combination they have had 
formal education in engineering, mathe-
matics, and library science; practical ex-
perience in libraries and large information 
centers; and teaching experience in the field 
covered by this book. The footnotes and the 
list of journals containing material on ISR 
attest the authors' thorough study of the lit-
erature. 

The book is refreshingly free of descrip-
tions of methods for which exaggerated 
claims have been made but which have rare-
ly proved to be as successful in practice as 
they were claimed in print. 

Becker and Hayes point out the interdis-
ciplinary character of their subject and warn 
that while their book is intended for the 
newcomer, the newcomer should not be a 
beginner to the field. Thus the nonlibrarian 
will find Chapter 2 a succinct history of li-
brarianship and a useful account of the ac-
complishments of librarians in creating and 
working with records about information. 

The librarian will learn in Chapter 3 why 
subject specialists have felt themselves forced, 
by deficiencies of librarianship, to develop 
more satisfactory control over information. 
Here coordinate indexing, mechanized cod-
ing, formalized abstracting, and facet analy-
sis (in classification) are contrasted to li-
brary procedures (selection, circulation, ref-
erence) , controls (classification schedules, 
subject heading authority lists) , and products 
(the dictionary card catalog) as described 
in Chapter 2. 

Chapter 4 describes the information 
framework and the user, including a handy 
block diagram so that specialized equipment 
and methods can be evaluated against the 
needs of a total system. The authors particu-
larly stress the fact that no total system has 
been attempted yet, using either a single 
general purpose machine or a complex of 
equipment. 

Various printing methods are described, 
perhaps too fully, in Chapter 5, but they 
lead into a useful description of machine 
language and the many coding methods 
used in this kind of writing and reading. 
This description clearly shows the difficulties 
which exist in the effort to make satisfactory 
automatic character readers serve as input 
devices. 

Chapter 6 deals with analysis, logical 
processing, and the computer. The authors 
describe the structure of the general pur-
pose digital computer, various binary cod-
ing methods used to represent numbers and 
letters, the commands used to instruct com-
puters in their operations, the process of 
programing computers, and the use of pro-
graming subroutines, editing routines, and 
compilers. There is a logical flow chart to 
show how a problem is treated, but unfor-
tunately the problem is expressed mathe-
matically. The chart could have been pre-
pared differently and more usefully for 
readers of this book; it would show the com-
puter output as information or references, 
rather than as data enabling a computer to 
continue a later run. 

This chapter also includes a treatment of 
computerized information-searching experi-
ments, indexing and abstracting experiments 
(both manual and automatic), language data 
processing, automatic file organization (and 
reorganization), and special purpose selec-

434 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



tors or searching devices, such as the Mini-
card equipment and magnetic tape com-
parators. 

The relationship of indexing, documents, 
and storage media is treated in Chapter 7, 
based on the importance of order of origi-
nals, of records, and of marks or holes. 
Hence the reader finds punched tapes, edge-
notched cards, peek-a-boo cards, and Hol-
lerith cards (the familiar punched cards for 
electric accounting machines) treated here, 
followed by magnetic recording on tape, 
disks, drums, cards, and strips. Here also 
microfilms, microfilm rapid selectors, Mini-
card, Filmorex, Walnut, Verac, and photo-
chromic images are described. 

Chapter 8 is the first in the section on 
elements. In analyzing information systems, 
the reader has to recognize the interdiscipli-
nary character of the effort. There follow 
sage words on the various responsibilities of 
users, operators, designers, and suppliers of 
systems. These responsibilities are elabo-
rated in Chapters 9-12, but with interesting 
changes in emphasis. Chapter 9 shows the 
analyst's difficulties in determining purpose, 
criteria of value of a system, and in defining 
the typical user. The precise definition of an 
individual request is treated fully. 

The responsibilities of the operators be-
come the elements of organization in Chap-
ter 10. Here the authors treat of order, vo-
cabulary, syntax, coding, and format in the 
organization of files, and go on to the proc-
esses of input, posting or updating, and han-
dling files. Then they show ho~ the com-
puting process fits here and how it differs 
from calculation, and the chapter closes 
with the organization of responses (output). 

The elements of equipment are given in 
Chapter 11, as storage media, reading and 
recording, handling, filing, and logical capa-
bilities. 

Chapter 12 gives parameters (limits) of 
the ISR situation and many figures about 
their implementation. After outlining param-
eters of operation and equipment, the au-
thors deal with the difficult task of evalua-
tion of the performance of arithmetical and 
control units of computers, and of input and 
output devices, including printers. 

They deal with implementation in nine 
pages, outlining it as planning and design, 
data gathering and definition, establishment 

SEPTEMBER 1964 

of relationships, flow diagraming, evaluation 
and selection of equipment, computer pro-
graming, equipment installation, and con-
version from the old to the new system. 
This small portion deserves treatment as a 
book in itself. The topic is very new; there 
is only one example which has been carried 
out as outlined here and its history is only 
partly in print: it is the MEDLARS project 
performed for the National Library of Med-
icine by the General Electric Company. 

In the implementation section the authors 
refer to the pioneering book, System Engi-
neering, by Harry H. Goode and Robert E. 
Machol (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957) 
under the entry "Good and McCall." The 
book is good but it didn't appear in McCall's! 
Actually, bibliographical errors are rare in 
this book. 

Chapter 13 deals with the role of a theory. 
The chapter contains a number of warnings 
which ought to be regarded seriously by all 
who are unfamiliar with the foundations of 
information system design as they are pres-
ently known. The authors point out that the 
fundamental theory behind librarianship and 
information handling has not yet been de-
veloped. They describe the place of mathe-
matical models in the development of theory 
and specifically select Boolean algebra, truth 
tables, and lattices to deal with classes, sets, 
and relationships. They point out that it is 
possible to quantify aspects of information 
system theory by using linear algebra, mat-
rices, probability, and stochastic processes, 
but they emphasize the fact that the basic 
values required for the employment of these 
parts of mathematics are rarely available in 
a working or experimental situation. They 
offer wise advice on the construction of tests 
of information systems and upon the inter-
pretation of the results of such tests as have 
been conducted up to the present time. 

Those who are not mathematically in-
clined can benefit by reading the short de-
scription of scientific method on pages 3 31-
32 followed by the limitations on the scien-
tific method on pages 357-58. Perhaps a 
careful reading of these pages would reduce 
the tendency of librarians to jump into the 
information systems pool before their pool 
has been filled with water. The authors indi-
cate that information system theory is still 
being assembled from fields outside the ac-

435 



tivity; it is not yet being developed from 
knowledge and data collected within the 
field. 

Chapter 14 is entitled "Theories of File 
Organization" and the work described in 
this chapter was supported in part by the 
National Science Foundation. The authors 
say that their general theoretical structure 
is based on the view that: "1. Large files rep-
resent a multiple level structure whose char-
acteristics are determined by both the physi-
cal parameters of the storage form and the 
logical problems in evaluating relevancy. 
2. Such a structure, in order to be responsive 
to the usage of the file, must provide some 
procedure for reorganization in terms of the 
changing usage." 

"With this view, the purpose of informa-
tion systems can be considered as providing 
relevant responses to an environment" . . . 
and "the attempt must be made continually 
to fit the organization of the stored re-
sponses to the environment rather than vice 
versa." 

In their effort to define file items the 
authors adopt five premises: ( 1 ) the con-
tents of a file should reflect its total utiliza-
tion, that is, both the contents of a library 
and representations of the requesters, of the 
requests, etc.; ( 2) the contents of the file 
are homogeneous; (3) a quantitative model 
and measure for relevancy are possible; ( 4) 
there is no essential relationship between the 
method of representing an item and the 
organization of groups of items into a file; 
( 5) organization is the grouping of items 
or records which are then handled as units 
and lose to that extent their individual 
identity. 

They then proceed to weight indexing 
terms for both indexing and request efforts. 
They also attempt a definition of relevancy 
by measuring the degree of association of 
relevancy, closeness of terms, and argu-
ments, employing connection or association 
matrices. 

The last three sections of the chapter 
deal with the logical organization of terms, 
by means of classification, subject headings, 
etc.; organization by activity to recognize 
the ways in which people use the collections; 
and reorganization to make the files meet 
new requirements. 

The authors have combined their own 

efforts and the work of others currently ac-
tive in this field into a stimulating chapter. 
The result should encourage other investi-
gators to select the portions from mathe-
matics which they require to provide an im-
proved understanding of the topic of file 
organization. 

Chapter 15, Theories of System Design, 
represents work supported in part by the 
United States Air Force. It is an effort to 
make a mathematical model of system de-
sign in ISR. While stating that the opera-
tional interrelationships are more important 
than the physical interrelationships, the 
authors use tape units, core memories, drum 
memories, disk units, and rotary card files as 
examples in their modeling. This chapter 
should point out to the nonmathematical, 
non-system-oriented librarian the hazard, if 
not the sheer folly, of making choices and 
decisions relating to new equipment and 
methods which will produce results he cannot 
anticipate or control, at a time when experts 
are still working out the theoretical founda-
tions of his profession. Conversely, this 
chapter can suggest to these librarians that 
the employment of systems experts for their 
problems increases the probability of getting 
satiifactory results in comparison to the 
results of do-it-yourself efforts.-C. D. Gull, 
Indiana University. 

History of American Schoolbooks. By 
Charles Carpenter. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. 332p. 
illus. $6.50. (62-10747). 

Librarians who have been privileged to 
examine prospective gift collections of books 
in lofts, smokehouses, and garrets, are well 
acquainted with the slender little volumes, 
bound in overprinted olive, tan, or blue 
boards, that constituted early American 
schoolbooks. Webster's spellers, Lindley 
Murray's grammars, Morse's geographies, 
McGuffey's readers, and other volumes pre-
pared for school use by such worthies as 
Frost, Rush, Olney, Hunt, and Spencer, prob-
ably interlace 90 per cent of the nineteenth-
century Americana collections still in priv-
ate hands, but we know surprisingly little 
about them. 

Carpenter's History of American School-

436 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES