College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews 
Conservation of Library Materials: A 

Manual and Bibliography on the Care, 
Repair and Restoration of Library Ma-
terials. By George Daniel Martin Cunha. 
Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 
1967. x, 405p., appendixes, bibliography, 
index, illustrations. $10.00 (67-12063). 

Since the pioneering publication in 1931 
of Lydenberg and Archer's slender The 
Care and Repair of Books, there has been 
only one other monograph in English on 
scientific book conservation. No profession 
in its infancy has a significant body of liter-
ature, but the emerging profession of book 
conservation is suffering prolonged growing 
pains. This is partly due to the fact that 
the profession's principal parent, bookbind-
ing, does not have an adequate technical 
literature in English, although its other 
parent, the conservation of museum ob-
jects, is producing highly competent writ-
ing. Most of the relevant literature is scat-
tered in books and journals of such diverse 
fields as bookbinding, conservation of art 
objects, the sciences, papermaking, and 
archives administration. Thus it is diffi-
cult for the curator or bookbinder to find 
all of the information that he needs, and 
it is often not in very useful form. 

The Conservation of Library Materials 
then is the most important monograph on 
the subject published in English thus far. 
Captain Cunha, a retired naval officer, now 
Conservator of the Boston Athenaeum, has 
attempted to synthesize or provide access 
to most of the knowledge which is neces-
sary for workers in the field. Despite the 
use of the term "manual" in the subtitle, 
however, this book is primarily a literature 
survey. There are no detailed instructions 
for any operation; the techniques of book-
binding and binding restoration, for ex-
ample, are treated in four pages. Approxi-
mately two-fifths of the book are text; one-
fifth is appendixes, and two-fifths are bibli-
ography. 

The text is a mixed bag of useful infor-
mation, balanced surveys, and sound evalu-
ations, on the one hand, with unclear and 
disorganized writing, fuzzy thinking, and 

misinformation on the other. For example, 
Captain Cunha usefully mentions a num-
ber of processes for deacidification or lami-
nation rather than just the Barrow processes 
which tend to be known to the exclusion of 
others. However, he perpetuates through 
numerous references to "good rag" and 
"bad wood pulp" papers the myth that rag 
paper is necessarily good and wood pulp 
paper is necessarily bad. In fact, he states 
that "even the better grades of chemically 
treated wood pulp paper can be expected to 
last only a decade or two," while discussing 
in other places in the book the hundreds-of-
years life expectancy of the "permanent/ 
durable" wood pulp papers. 

Cunha recognizes the need of librarians 
and bookbinders to know more about the 
technology and terminology of the ma-
terials with which they deal. However, 
such misleading explanations as those which 
confuse book and text, or coated and filled 
papers, or claim that the plastic base of 
stamping foil assists the adhesion of the 
gold, or that potassium lactate neutralizes 
acid in leather, only worsen the situation. 

The book contains scattered warnings 
about toxicity and explosion danger of 
chemicals, although unfortunately a section 
of the text dealing with precautions which 
is listed in the table of contents does not 
exist. It is a matter of the gravest impor-
tance to state that carbon disulfide must be 
used with caution while, in the same con-
text, giving no precautions for the use of 
the highly explosive ethylene oxide gas, or 
to recommend the very toxic carbon tetra-
chloride-ethylene dichloride mixture with-
out offering any caveats, or to point only 
to the "objectionable odor" of such hazard-
ous solvents as carbon tetrachloride or ben-
zene. 

The appendixes are also of mixed value. 
The list of research centers and profes-
sional organizations, for example, is useful 
both for its specific citations and in giving 
an impression of the extent of such organi-
zations, but the Technical Association of 
the Pulp and Paper Industry is in New 
York City, not Appleton, Wisconsin. In Ap-
pendix E the formula for potassium lactate 

/ 315 



316 / College b- Research Libraries • March 1968 

solution calls for over ten times the correct 
amount of paranitrophenol; it is little won-
der that Cunha has trouble with staining, 
as he mentions earlier. On the basis of this 
the reviewer would hesitate to use any of 
these formulae without checking them in 
their source, but the sources are not given. 
The glossary which comprises Appendix I 
is reprinted from ALA's 1951 Library Bind-
ing Manual and has little to do with conser-
vation. 

The organization of the bibliography is 
almost incomprehensible; it purports to 
follow the chapter arrangement of the text, 
but does not exactly do so. For a bibliogra-
phy with seventy-eight headings and ap-
proximately two thousand entries, an index 
of authors would be useful, and a table of 
contents is indispensible. Within the classi-
fication scheme, catalogs of exhibitions of 
bindings are listed under "History—Gen-
eral," "History—Bindings" and "Repair and 
Restoration—Binding—General." An article 
on a device for testing library bindings is 
listed under "Material—General" and "Con-
servation—General," but not under "Bind-
ing—General" or "Library Binding." 

The principles of selection are difficult to 
deduce. Haslam's virtually worthless pam-
phlet on cleaning books and prints is listed 
twice (once anonymously), but I could not 
find the TAPPI Standards which includes 
widely cited procedures for the testing of 
paper. Storm and Peckham's useful Intro-
duction to Book Collecting is listed, but 
Glaister's Encyclopedia of the Book is not. 
One of the most puzzling omissions is 
Herbst's supplement to Mejer's major bib-
liography on bookbinding. 

The bibliography (as well as references 
in the text) is a veritable jungle of incon-
sistencies, misconstructions, and obscurities. 
Titles in foreign languages are sometimes 
but not always given in English; accents 
are used or ignored at random; titles of 
journals are cited in widely varying form. 
Some entries are annotated, most are not. 
Joannis Guigard and Jacques Guignard both 
emerge as J. Guigard. Warren Jenney be-
comes Jenney Warren. Keyes D. Metcalf is 
cited as D. M. Keyes. Or take Mr. Smith. 
He is cited four times, as Hermann Smith, 
Herman Smith, L. Herman Smith (correct-
ly!), and as Herman L. Smith. His article 

is cited once in the bibliography without 
his name at all. 

There are a number of cases of the same 
items being listed twice under different 
main entries. For example, the catalogue 
of the 1957 Baltimore bookbinding exhibi-
tion is listed in the same section of the 
bibliography under both its title and the 
name of its (unstated) compiler. (The 
publication date in one entry is given as 
1950.) 

The Conservation of Library Materials, 
then, no matter how inaccurately, obscure-
ly, or indirectly, will provide access to vir-
tually all knowledge on book conservation 
in the Western world. It is unfortunate 
that so much patience will be required of 
the reader to find the information that he 
wants, and that there is so much misin-
formation in the text and appendixes, and 
cited in the bibliography. That such a key 
to the field as this has been so desperately 
needed cannot, however, absolve the pub-
lisher from blame for such an incredibly 
bad job of editing, if indeed the manu-
script was edited at all. It is particularly 
distressing that the "publisher to the li-
brary profession" is responsible for so totally 
careless an example of publishing.—Paul 
N. Banks—The Newberry Library. 

Developing a Computer-Based Informa-
tion System. By R. E. Rosone et al. New 
York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1967. 
384p. $14.95 (67-21331). 

The term "information system" is an 
elusive one since it encompasses such a 
broad range of specific kinds of systems. 
The techniques, methodology, and philoso-
phy of system design are in principle ap-
plicable to all of them. However, there are 
differences in detail which result from the 
need to focus attention on the problems of 
particular importance in a specific type of 
system. Since any author attempting to. 
present methods for system design must 
use realistic examples to illustrate them, 
his book will show an emphasis on the 
problems significant in those examples. 

Such is the case with this very useful 
introduction to techniques for development 
of information systems. The examples cho-
sen are generally representative of "man-
agement" information systems, but par-