College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews / 63 

libraries because of their historical accumu-
lations under older rules (please note: not 
necessarily under the older ALA rules), we 
then discover that our national library is 
not going to follow even what we have 
finally come up with. Instead, it will follow 
a policy of keeping to the old rules for any 
entry already established, and applying 
the new only for entries new to its par-
ticular catalogs; a policy for which it has 
coined the term "superimposition." 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that same 
national library which, together with the 
Association of Research Libraries, exerted 
the major influence to make the new really 
the old, has courageously embarked upon 
a truly noteworthy and trailblazing effort 
to provide cataloging on a national scale in 
machine readable form. The preface to 
the new code tells us explicitly, however, 
that, while the code makers did not ignore 
machine (i.e., computer) considerations, 
they did nothing about them. A similar 
statement is to be found in the new fifing 
rules of the ALA, and is certainly implicit 
in the new edition of the Library of Con-
gress subject headings. 

Lubetzky's original effort toward clarity 
of principle has vanished, leaving behind 
significant traces of his mighty intellect in 
particular rules, but shattering the grand 
conception. Perhaps we should have ac-
cepted Lubetzky's original and then exiled 
him, as the Athenians did Solon, for ten 
years during which we could make no 
changes. 

We have managed, then, after our thirty-
five years of effort, to put together a new 
code which is better than what we had by 
a considerable factor. So much for achieve-
ment. But. . . 

We have muffed our chance for a code 
based clearly on principle, we have missed 
the boat on international cooperation (sig-
nificantly, just as the Library of Congress 
begins a magnificent program of interna-
tional cooperation in shared cataloging), 
we have allowed the problems of a rela-
tively few large existing libraries to take 
precedence over the emerging needs of 
many more libraries which will be the large 
existing libraries of the future, and we have 
ignored the new technology which we know 
represents what we must use in the future. 

But we discharged our responsibility to 
those existing large collections (many of 
which did not follow the old rules anyway); 
we did not upset too many applecarts; we 
have kept faith, not with Cutter and the 
giants, but with the catalog embroiderers of 
the twenties and thirties. 

And so, with a crash, to earth. We can 
live with the new code and even with the 
way in which the Library of Congress is 
applying it. We have to. But, inevitably, 
we will have to change—perhaps back 
toward Lubetzky and forward to the com-
puter simultaneously. It might be a good 
idea to start the work now. It has taken 
since 1941 to get to this point. Perhaps if 
we begin again right away we may finish 
our next code by 1983. 

And yet—one is tempted to soften the 
harshness of the above by asking if any-
thing more was really politically possible at 
this time. In any case, it is just as certain 
that if we have not done quite what we 
should, it is not something we can blame 
on the Library of Congress, or the com-
mittees, or the Association of Research Li-
braries, or ALA, or any other organization 
—but only on all of us, the profession as a 
whole. We have to live with it. Unfortu-
nately, so does our public—and our and 
their successors.—Theodore C. Hines, Co-
lumbia University. 

Classification for Medical Literature. By 
Eileen R. Cunningham. Revised and En-
larged by Eleanor G. Steinke and Mary 
Louise Gladish. 5th ed. Nashville: Van-
derbilt University Press, 1967. 267p. $6 
(67-17562). 

Eileen R. Cunningham produced the first 
edition of her classification system sHbrtly 
after 1929 when she became librarian of 
the Vanderbilt University medical schooj li-
brary, now the medical division of the Joint 
University Libraries in Nashville. The sys-
tem was designed to conform to the se-
quence of the medical curriculum, and was 
divided into four main parts: biologic sci-
ences, organic systems of the body, patho-
logic and clinical subjects, and paramedical 
works of interest in medical collections. The 
system's major features are its close rela-
tionships between complementary subjects, 



64 / College <6- Research Libraries • January 1968 

its easy expansibility, its simple symbolic 
notation, and its adaptability to collections 
of any size. 

The first edition was produced in visible 
file form in 1929. The second and third edi-
tions, both in paperback, were published in 
1937 and 1946 respectively. The fourth 
edition appeared in 1955, with Eleanor 
Steinke listed on the title page as a collabo-
rator for the first time; Mrs. Cunningham 
had acknowledged Miss Steinke's earlier as-
sistance in the preface to the third edition. 
The major changes from the third to the 
fourth edition were in the sections for psy-
chology and psychiatry, where related ma-
terial was brought closer together, and in 
the section for radiation and atomic medi-
cine which was considerably enlarged. 

Mrs. Cunningham had completed the re-
vision of six sections in preparation for the 
fifth edition before she died in 1965; Miss 
Steinke then took over. The fifth edition, 
the first in hard covers, has a text of two 
hundred pages and an index of sixty pages 
(two columns). While the same basic struc-
ture has been retained, the necessary inclu-
sion of new material has led to some major 
changes (intensified by the twelve-year gap 
between the fourth and fifth editions) 
which will require substantial reclassifica-
tion by those libraries desiring to keep up 
with the new edition. 

Mrs. Cunningham's classification provid-
ed medical libraries with an easily used sys-
tem designed specifically for their own needs, 
both medical and nonmedical. Although the 
Boston system and several more parochial 

systems had been developed before 1929, 
the Cunningham system gradually earned 
a solid place for itself. It has now become 
the only system other than that of the Na-
tional Library of Medicine specifically de-
signed for medical libraries and in use 
among more than a few such libraries. 

Letters were written to the forty-six li-
braries listed in the 1959 Directory of the 
Medical Library Association as users of the 
Cunningham system to see how they were 
reacting to the many changes in the med-
ical literature. Replies from thirty-two (70 
per cent) showed that seventeen were still 
using Cunningham, eight were currently 
changing to NLM and three had already 
done so; one was currently changing to LC, 
and one had already done so; one had never 
used Cunningham; and one library had 
been absorbed. Size and type of library 
meant little since large and small libraries 
of various types either changed systems or 
retained the Cunningham classification. 

Because of the growing standardization 
of medical classification being brought 
about by the rapidly growing number of 
new medical libraries, the Cunningham and 
other privately originated medical systems 
will probably die out except in some of 
the large research collections (where the 
cost of reclassification would be prohibi-
tive). Even if this happens medical librari-
ans will remember the development and 
growth of the Cunningham System as a 
needed job that was well done.—William 
K. Beatty, Northwestern University. 

C