College and Research Libraries


528 1 College & Research Libraries • November, 1965 

interprets their value as historical source 
material. · 

L. Quincy Mumford, librarian of Con-
gress, reviews the past and envisions future 
developments of importance, for the Na-
tional Union Catalog of the Library of Con-
gress. He stresses the great value to scholar-
ship which would come from the publica-
tion of the fifteen million entries as yet un-
published for pre-1952 books in United 
States libraries. He foresees in the future 
"the possibility of making a machine-read-
able National Union Catalog available to 
other bibliographic centers throughout the 
United States." 

"Form and Substance" by Ralph R. Shaw 
questions too ready an acceptance by li-
brarians of innovations and trends without 
thorough analysis of their implications. He 
cites also the tendency to accept statements 
as being authoritative and applicable any-
where, when they are actually unsubstan-
tiated and may apply only to special situa-
tions. He says: "The purpose and justifica-
tion for storage, retrieval, and transmission 
lies in the intellectual record. . . . We need 
to manage the record and to handle the 
physical objects in which it is stored and 
to transmit them. But when that becomes 
the end, that is ultimate replacement of the 
thought by the thing." This article deserves 
wide reading.-Rudolph G;elsness, Univer-
sity of Arizona. 

Science, Humanism and Libraries. By 
D. J. Foskett. New York: Hafner Pub-
lishing Co., 1964. 264 p. $4.50. 

This book is a collection of seventeen 
papers and articles produced between 1951 
and 1962 by the librarian of the Institute 
of Education, University of London, whose 
work as a member of the (British) Classifi-
cation Research Group is well known. 

The main theme which runs through the 
essays is that of the problem of the com-
munication of specialized information. The 
by now well worn discussion of the "two 
cultures" topic provides the matter for the 
first and last sections of the book. Here 
Foskett is on the side of the angels and 
submits that there is no fundamental cleav-
age between science and humanism, though 
the tendency towards division must be con-
stantly guarded against in the instruments 
of communication, libraries and librarians. 

After a plea for style in scientific writing, 
the author, in the essays which follow 
(apart from those dealing with special 
classifications), points out the necessity for 
positive, active collaboration by the librari-
an in the provision and dissemination of 
information. Foskett's background as a spe-
cial librarian, now in a professional library 
in a university, leads him, in the articles on 
documentation needs in libraries for various 
disciplines, to be pleasingly careful in dis-
cussing, for example, the role of the li-
brarian as "information scientist" and his 
responsibility in different situations and 
fields of knowledge, to ensure that the lit-
erature which he collects is used. A problem 
in the United States is that of the use of 
research libraries (mostly university) by 
special libraries which are under no obliga-
tion to reciprocate. This use can vitiate ser-
vice to the primary clientele and while here 
the large libraries have had to take steps to 
ensure that this particular demand for ser-
vice does not get out of hand, it will be 
a while before such a state of affairs comes 
about in England, for the "trade balance" 
seems to be in favor of the special libraries, 
as Foskett reports. 

The group of articles devoted to the con-
struction of special classifications are expo-
sitions of the author's view, and doubtless 
that of the CRG, of the need for a faceted 
classification as the basis of all methods of 
information retrieval. Cleverdon's results 
with the Cranfield experiment did show 
however that some modification of Facet 
was needed to make it comparable with 
other classification systems. 

Most of the observations concerning the 
problems, human and material, which li-
brarians are having to face are already fa-
miliar to thinking practitioners, though the 
solution of those problems lags of neces-
sity for lack of the necessary money. For 
example, in discussing documentation in 
the social sciences, to which he has already 
devoted a book, Foskett calls for the kind of 
information services which subsidized scie~­
tific research and industry now take for 
granted. The degree of bibliographical con-
trol which can be exercised by the librarian 
is a function of the money which can be put 
into the effort, and resources which can be 
devoted to this have to be related to provi-
sion of the material, too. It is now possible 
to make the purveying of information ser-



vices pay a profit, and a number of rather 
dubious organizations are exploiting this. 
Government departments too, are setting up 
costly documentation services in parallel 
with libraries, in order to minister to special 
needs where existing libraries cannot under-
take the job. Perhaps this is an acceptable 
solution where the economic situation per-
mits, but one sympathizes with the problem 
in England where it is ruinously wasteful 
to set up information services divorced from 
the depositories of that information. Fos-
kett's tart remarks on costly American re-
trieval schemes and their relative inefficien-
cy doubtless reflect his frustration at the 
lack of funds for documentation purposes 
in England. 

If the "two cultures" split cleaves librari-
anship it will not be Mr. _ Foskett's fault.-
Francis A. Johns, Rutgers University. 

American State Archives. By Ernst Pos-
ner. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1964. xiv, 397p. Appendices, bib-
liography, index: $7.50. (64-23425). 

In this volume Ernst Posner, dean of 
American archivists, has done for the archi-
val profession what many librarians have 
been hoping for from the Survey of Li-
brary Functions in the States. Here is 
a solid, meaty, succinct, and searching 
analysis of the development of state ar-
chival agencies, their present status, and 
their future prospects. The volume is based, 
in the large sense, on Dr. Posner's long and 
distinguished experience in the archival pro-
fession both here and abroad, and more 
specifically on a twenty-month study which 
took him to archival institutions in forty-
nine of the fifty states, and also to Puerto 
Rico. The survey was conducted under 
sponsorship of the Society of American 
Archivists and financed by a grant from the 
Council on Library Resources. 

The first thirty pages of American State 
Archives are devoted to a general survey of 
the origins and growth of state record-keep-
ing practices in this country, beginning with 
the colonial period. The legislative estab-
lishment of official archival agencies is 
shown to have begun in 1901 with the es-
tablishment of the Alabama Department of 
Archives and History. In short succession 
other southern states followed suit. Missis-
sippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ten-

Book Reviews 1 529 

nessee, Arkansas, Delaware, and Maryland 
all followed the pattern of establishing an 
agency with responsibilities for historical 
and archival matters. Within a short time 
state libraries undertook archival programs 
in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, Iowa, and 
Indiana; and historical societies established 
archival departments in Kansas, Nebraska, 
Wisconsin, and Oklahoma. More than thirty 
years would elapse, Dr. Posner points out, 
before the federal government followed 
these precedents with establishment of the 
National Archives. 

Dr. Posner devotes the major portion of 
his book to a state-by-state analysis of the 
development of archival agencies. He pro-
vides the reader with a great deal of spe-
cific and useful information on each and 
successfully meets the great challenge of 
doing so without the reader feeling over-
whelmed with details and statistics. He 
demonstrates a keen understanding of the 
reasons for the great variety of administra-
tive structures in the archival field and 
properly attributes this disparity to those 
individuals whose leadership in their states 
and in the nation has helped make archives 
a true profession rather than a file-keeping 
function. Especially valuable in these state 
summaries are Dr. Posner's candid com-
ments on the existing shortcomings of each 
agency. These are judicious and temperate 
and rest on the fundamental premise that 
while certain archival functions are essen-
tial to good record-keeping, there are a 
variety of legitimate ways ·in which these 
functions may be administered. 

The concluding portion of the book con-
sists of a summary of findings, a discus-
sion of current trends in archival programs, 
and most important of all a · set of standards 
for state archival agencies. These are a 
model of their kind. The standards were 
developed by Dr. Posner and the survey 
committee and have been approved by the 
Society of American Archivists. There are 
also appendices giving a glossary of archival 
terms, comparative statistical data on budg-
ets and professional salaries in the states, 
a basic bibliography of writings on public 
archives administration in the United States, 
and a useful index. 

This is a first-rate book in every respect. 
It is a welcome reminder that real contribu-
tions to know ledge rest on thorough re-
search, objective appraisal, and mature