College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews 
Administrative Organization of Austra-

lian University Libraries. Ed. by 
F. D. O. Fielding. (Library Association 
of Australia, University and College Li-
braries Section. News Sheet, Supplement, 
No. 1). Adelaide, 1966. various pagings. 

The detailed analysis of the libraries of 
fourteen universities of Australia in 1966, 
as reflected in the charts and statistical 
data presented in this report, shows a 
striking growth since 1961, when it was 
the reviewer's privilege to work with the 
librarians of that country. Mr. Fielding, li-
brarian at the University of Queensland, 
has done a meticulous job in identifying 
various aspects of the organizations and 
operations of university libraries of the 
country, including such matters as library 
committees, personnel, selection and acqui-
sition activities, cataloging and classifica-
tion, housing and loan of materials, de-
partmental libraries, size of collections, and 
other aspects of the individual institutions. 
Organization charts of each library are in-
cluded. 

The usefulness of such a compilation to 
librarians of the country, as well as to stu-
dents and others interested in library de-
velopment, is quite apparent. The editor is 
modest about the likely helpfulness of the 
report, and suggests that "it may prove 
possible to revise this booklet from time 
to time." This should certainly be done. 
American librarians and students in library 
schools might find this document most illu-
minating in respect to the various aspects of 
Australian university libraries. The coopera-
tion in completion of the extensive ques-
tionnaires distributed by Mr. Fielding is 
in itself an indication of the excellent spirit 
of the librarians of the country to improve 
library service to students, faculty members, 
and researchers generally.—Maurice F. 
Tauber, Columbia University. 

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. P r e -
pared by the American Library Associa-
tion, the Library of Congress, the Library 
Association, and the Canadian Library 

6 2 / 

Association. North American Text. Chi-
cago: ALA, 1967. xxi, 339p. index. $8.50 
(66-29239). 
Reviewing the new code as an isolated 

document might, in one sense, result in a 
fairer review. The new code is after all a 
marked improvement over its predecessor. 
The basic differences between the two are 
well known in the profession and have 
been widely discussed. It is useful to have 
the rules for descriptive cataloging included 
in the same volume as those for main entry, 
even though these rules are substantially 
unchanged. There are some problems in 
treating rules for choice of entry separately 
from those for form of entry, but the ap-
proach is basically sound. The index is not 
as good as it might be (Festschriften, for 
example, are not indexed adequately, and 
technical reports appear not at all), but 
the work is physically attractive. 

Inevitably, however, reviewing the new 
code as an isolated document would be less 
useful than a consideration of that code 
in the context in which it appears. 

To begin with, it seems a pity that we 
have such an anomalous title page: this is 
the "North American Text" of an Anglo-
American code. Abstractly, it would seem 
better to have a real Anglo-American code 
even if this had been at the cost of North 
American acceptance of the British version 
in its entirety. 

It seems a further pity that these new 
cataloging rules deviate from the principles 
accepted nearly unanimously at the inter-
national level at the Paris Conference. This 
is particularly true since those principles 
were largely an American product, and 
since the Americans voted for their accept-
ance. It is perhaps exceptionally true in 
that their acceptance involved basic changes 
for some other countries and relatively 
minor ones for us. Shades of the League of 
Nations! 

But then what have we done? Having 
embraced in printed form a code in which 
the deviations from the Paris principles 
seem almost completely intended to mini-
mize problems occasioned in large research