College and Research Libraries Bricks and Mortarboards, New York: Ed- ucational Facilities Laboratories, Inc., 1964? 168p. (64-14232). What will happen to the physical en- vironment of American colleges and uni- versities during the building expansion needed to accommodate twice the present enrollment by 1975? Will expediency rather than quality be the byword? Will our cam- puses become crowded with misplaced aca- demic slums? Will the new buildings stifle or serve higher education? Concern about these questions led Edu- cational Facilities Laboratories to send five professional writers touring the country to visit outstanding recent campus buildings and to talk with people who planned or are using them. The writers' observations, rein- forced by the comments of educators, archi- tects, and planners-and by many illustra- tions-are presented in nontechnical lan- guage aimed at those who make decisions affecting the future of American higher ed- ucation. EFL believes that these decision- makers will determine the answers to the above questions. Consequently, the book is intended to make them aware of the questions and to enlighten them for wisely framing the answers. Four major types of campus buildings and the campus itself are considered in separately written sections: "Classrooms," by Mel Elfin, "Laboratories," by Bernard Asbell, "Libraries," by Alvin Toffier, "Dor- mitories," by Margaret Farmer, and "Cam- pus," by James J. Morisseau. In each sec- tion pertinent problems of building to ac- commodate both expansion and the chang- ing educational technology are discussed. Unique solutions indicated by buildings and campuses selected from the country- wide scene are submitted to demonstrate the possiblities of quality 'design. The examples described reveal a variety of building an:angements achieyed for simi- lar purposes on different campuses. Some 154/ Book Reviews of them represent rival theories of planning such as that of convertible space opposed to committed space. The highly flexible and versatile "concourses" at Delta College in Saginaw, Michigan, are compared with the tightly committed rooms on the U niver- sity of Illinois Chicago campus. A com- promise between these is indicated by the plans of a Southern Illinois University class- room building which combines permanently fixed elements and areas with semiperma- nent or movable partitions. New teaching methods are shown to have inspired variant building forms such as the octagonal tele- vision classroom structure at the University of Miami's University College and Penn State's circular lecture center. Although Miami's octagon is a rare ex- ample of a campus building literally shaped to accommodate electronic equipment and its users, Bricks and Mortarboards includes enough examples of electronic installations (existing or planned) to make it obvious that these innovations must be considered in the design of some campus buildings. There are references to "q-spaces" at Flor- ida Atlantic University, "environmental car- rels" at Grand Valley State College in Michigan, the "telemation system" at the University of Wisconsin, and the mechaniz- ing or automating of library operations. All of these developments are too recent to have created much proficiency in planning buildings for or around them. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recognized this situa- tion when it recently conducted a competi- tion among architectural firms for the de- . sign of a college electronic communication center. The book does emphasize the need for wiring ducts, sound control, air condi- tioning, and good lighting for most of the new equipment. The uncertainties of future use of electronic devices strengthen the book's recurrent theme of flexibility in plan- ning. Planning problems posed by expansion of the student body are complicated by ex- ยท- panding collections and services in the case of the library building. Further difficulties are explained by the writer who notes the recent revolution in the concept of college and university libraries (adapting the li- brary to man) and predicts a coming revo- lution (adapting the library to the machine). The contemporary trend toward making the library more human is demonstrated by the new libraries at Washington University in St. Louis and Colorado College in Colo- rado Springs. The prospective possibilities ar.e sketched in descriptions of mechaniza- tion at the University of Missouri, the Uni- versity of California at San Diego, and UCLA, and in discussions of computer use for the Library of Congress. Opinions of ex- perts are given on the potentials of auto- matic systems of information storage, re- trieval, and transmission. The views are so diversified that they affirm Ralph Ellsworth's comment that, "Our buildings should be capable of major expansion or of conver- sion to other uses." The effort of the writers to present infor- mation in language easily understood by laymen is particularly evident in the sec- tion "Laboratories." Here the relationship on floor plans of the work areas, the struc- ture, and the utility lines is variously char- acterized as "skeleton with a backbone" (Biology Building at Rice University), "exoskeleton" (Colorado College's Olin Hall) ap.d "skeleton with a rib cage" (Chem- istry Building of the University of Califor- nia at Berkeley) . Here also the exchange of ideas between the architect and faculty members is described to show how good building design is most apt to emerge from a clear expression of needs and functions of the space to be enclosed. Financing of college buildings is investi- gated in the discussion of dormitories which points out the rather extraordinary achieve- ment by Parsons College of making dormi- tories pay for themselves in less than five years. A close look is taken at the experi- ences on several campuses where building (and sometimes operation) of dormitories has been a venture of private enterprise. This section and that on the campus both stress the effect of the physical setting on the student, making it quite clear that the buildings themselves can be major factors iri shaping intellectual development. Book Reviews I 155 Bricks and Mortarboards' influence on education decision-makers may be some- what lessened by the diversity of its writing styles and by the perhaps arbitrary selec- tion of examples (e.g. , Why didn't the sec- tion on laboratories m ention the "plug-in" arrangement at Southern Illinois Univer- sity?). The well-illustrated report form has been used to good purpose in previous EFL publications, however, and in this case its success in presenting new ideas on con- temporary campus building design prob- lems is evident from the fact that it has been quoted in two architectural periodi- cals.-Richard H. Perrine, Rice University. The Typographic Book, 1450-1935. By Stanley Morison and Kenneth Day. Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. 99p., 377 plates. $30. ( 64-12259). This is a beautiful book; many libraries and librarians will consider it worth the steep price which it commands. Stanley Morison's Four Centuries of Fine Printing was originally published in four hundred folio copies in 1924. Being also a beautiful book, it soon attracted the atten- tion of typophiles who immediately bought it out of print, making it a collectors' item in its own right. Although reprinted several times in lesser format, the folio has re- mained sought-and not always found- for two-score years. The pres~nt book is basically the 1924 folio and is intended to supersede it, but it has been much revised, supplemented, and if possible made more beautiful. Facsimiles of some one hundred additional title and text pages have been included in The Typo- graphic Book, bringing the total number of fine illustrations to 377, representing the work of the great book and type designers from the beginning of printing to 1935. Arranged chronologically so that the artistic development of typography may be most easily seen, the book is well indexed. Although the reason for the book is al- most entirely its excellent plates, there are some sixty-six pages of introductory text. This text is a revision of the 1924 intro- duction, plus "an essay re-written from Modern Fine Printing (1925), a companion pre-war folio long out of reach except in some libraries." Kenneth Day has acted as general editor of The Typographic Book