College and Research Libraries BOOK REVIEWS A List of the Original Appearances of Dashiell Hammett's Magazine Work. By E. H. Mundell. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1968. (The Serif Series: Bibliographies and Checklists, 13) $5.00. (75-97620). Mr. Mundell's assembly is neatly de- scribed by its title. It is a commendable class exercise which has climbed its way into expensive print with a reasonably me- ticulous sense of separate facts and no sense at all of why they should have been assembled. It has knowledge of its sub- ject but no understanding at all of why the subject need have been approached. The compiler is careful to note from time to time that, "the original printing has not been examined," but he never tells us why book reviews, unsigned, have been assigned to Hammett. Although he seems never to have read more than the opening sentence of any of the stories, he seems to miss any connection between "The Big Knock-over" and "$106,000 Blood Money." He has been too little curi- ous to discover the publication date of "It Creeps By Night" (properly "Creeps by Night," 1931). William F. Nolan's recent "Dashiell Hammett: A Casebook" (McNally & Lof- tin, 1970, $6.95) is much more useful and engaged. Mr. Mundell's dreadful little class exercise should have been graded C for sufficiently careful servitude by an instructor who would then have told him that making a bibliography is different than doing fifty push-ups. The whole proceeding is an example of conspicuous waste and Kent State Univer- sity Press ought to inquire into the com- petence of Mr. William White, general editor of the Serif Series. Mr. Mundell gets his C but he has also to be arraigned for 280/ Recent Publications committing another nonbook, one more ef- fluence in our affiuent society.-]ames San- doe, University of Colorado. The Manual of Psychiatric . Television; Theory, Practice, Imagination. By James J. Onder. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Maynard House Pub., 1970. 144p. $6.25. Dr. Onder has produced the first com- prehensive manual for those interested in television applications to psychiatry. He surveys early uses of television in various institutions, and clearly identifies what television can and cannot do. Uses for teaching, resident supervision, and thera- py receive considerable attention. Self- confrontation is described on both a theo- retical and practical basis. Staff uses are described, including long-distance two-way consultations, closed-circuit programs on the ward, and both verbal and nonverbal communication. The effects of television on therapist and patient receive attention, and there is a section on protecting patient privacy. An excellent chapter on production techniques includes camera work, audio and editing techniques, and the like. In his conclusions, Dr. Onder discusses a need he identified in the course of his study of the field: that of having a coor- dinator on the staff who provides the bridge between professional psychiatric personnel and technicians. Suggestions for research include inves- tigation of how visual rna terials affect the learning process, how various camera tech- niques affect what is seen, and what mea- suring instruments can be developed to determine how much is learned from the teachers' use of videotaped patient ma- terial. Further suggestions include research in- to the effectiveness of providing therapy by a two-way television system, its use in postgraduate education, and the use of .,.. ,. ~~---------------------~------------------------------------------------~--------------, l the medium itself as a major tool in psy- chiatric research. An extensive bibliography is appended. It is somewhat inaccurate in that certain authors cited in the main body of Onder's work do not appear in the bibliography. The absence of an index makes the book less useful than it might be otherwise. However, it is certainly a valuable ad- dition to any psychiah·ic department li- brary where television is used and is a must for all health science libraries.-Brig- itte L. Kenney, University of Mississippi Medical Center. Agricultural Sciences Information Net- work Development Plan: EDUCOM Re- search Report No. 169. Boston, 1969. 74p. $6.00. At the behest of the National Agricul- tural Library and in accordance with pol- icy guidelines established by an advisory committee representing users of agricultur- al information, an EDUCOM study team set about developing a network concept and implementation plan. The sp ecific goal which emerged was to devise a "pro- gram for mobilizing our proliferating agri- cultural and biological information re- sources and sharing them with the land- grant colleges through a formal, NAL-or- ganized network." The R eport suggested that the land- grant and National Agricultural Library relationships fall into two categories: ( 1) the functional systems providing informa- tion for intermediate or ultimate users, and ( 2) the telecommunication system supportive of the information service func- tioning through rapid distribution of the services of the information network. It was advanced, furthermore, that the basic com- ponents providing the responses would be land-grant libraries, information analy- sis centers, and a telecommunication sys- tem. In the system proposed, the sixty-nine land-grant institutions would be connect- ed to a regional node by a narrow-band teletype line in a regional pall-and-select network. The control of each network would be exercised by a PABDX central- ly located at the National Agricultural Li- brary. Interconnection of each regional network within NAL would be by means Recent Publications I 281 of a narrow-band teletype line and voice- grade line. The regional nodes in the Na- tional Agricultural Library would send messages to one another through a store- and-forward type of switching machine. Included in the EDUCOM study was an investigation by the General Electric Company's Communications Products De- partment. Although the proposal of this group is only illustrative of a telecommu- nication system, it is an interesting feature of the Report. As a supplement to the ba- sic document, it includes the rationale cit- ing the assumptions, the system features , the explanations of the terminals as well as various estimates of costs for equipment and line charges. The GE group concluded that a well-designed communications net- work can be the difference between suc- cess and failure of a nationwide library network. As the great thinker of modern librar- ianship, Verner Clapp, has recently said: "There is nothing new about library net- works except the name." In considering networks we are in many ways really re- ferring to the ancient concept of coopera- tion. In the land-grant institution tradi- tion alone, we can look back as far as the Morrill Act in order to identify the genesis of our collaborative efforts in the sharing of information and resources. What exactly then have the authors Beck- er, King, and Olsen proposed some 109 years later which is new and exciting? In the first place, they admit that their plan is a fundamental one and that its func- tions are not unique. Much of the report is, in fact, old hat in that it emphasizes the elements of interlibrary loan, photo- copying service, referral centers, geo- graphical depositories, and the coordina- tion of acquisitions. These are not new concepts and they do not make the Re- port a landmark study of networks. In fairness to the team, on the other hand, this was not an objective of the EDUCOM investigation. One missing element, nonetheless, is a sound reference to an acceptable philo- sophical position about the purpose of a library network. No matter how crude, no matter how sophisticated it is, this propos- al can have meaning only in its relevance to the information which is provided with-