College and Research Libraries


such interesting topics as student unrest, 
political interference, influence of foreign 
professors, and even curriculum. Significant 
details are sometimes glossed over (or 
dropped out entirely) while other facts are 
repeated several times in a vain attempt to 
help the reader deal with the foreshadow-
ings and flashbacks. The unjustified-line, 
cold-type format is legible but uninviting 
and the placement of running heads annoy-
ing. The bibliography seems adequate and 
the index seems somewhat better than those 
found in other Scarecrow books. 

The carpings of reviewers must be dis-
counted; this is an informative work and is 
worth every bit of the effort it takes to di-
gest it.-Perry D. Morrison, University of 
Oregon. 

British University Libraries. By K. W. 
Neal. Published by the author at 7 
Church Road, Wilmslow, Cheshire, En-
gland, SK9 6HH, 1970, 149p. 35s. 

An Introduction to University Library 
Administration. By James Thompson. 
London, Clive Bingley, 1970. 136p. 35s. 

It is interesting that the spring of 1970 
should produce two volumes on the subject 
of university library administration, treating 
the facets of the subject in almost the same 
order, quoting widely from many sources, 
much preoccupied with the "Parry report," 
filling about 140 5W' x 9" pages, and sell-
ing for 35s. Yet these two are quite differ-
ent works and a single review, I believe, is 
appropriate for proper comparison. 

The authors are well-known librarians; 
Neal, a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester 
School of Librarianship and Thompson, the 
Librarian of Reading University. Both au-
thors attempt to compress the essence of 
university librarianship into about ·a hun-
dred and fifty pages, which results in a 
cross between a library science course sylla-
bus and a Reader's Digest Condensed 
Books version of Wilson and Tauber (to 
which, incidentally, Neal never refers). 
The order of topics treated is similar though 
not identical: general functions of a library 
system, library government, committees, de-
partmental libraries and collection organiza-
tion, finance, staff, selection procedures and 

Recent Publications I 421 

policies, cataloging, binding, circulation, 
periodicals, public instruction in library use, 
library building planning, and library co-
operation-an order reasonably dictated by 
logic, if not custom. 

Because of the shortness of the works, 
the chapters can only cover briefly the sa-
lient features of the subject at hand. To 
remedy this, Neal gives a list of "Other 
Reading" at the end of each chapter. 
Thompson's bibliography would lead, of 
course, to more extensive discussions. The 
problems that are caused by this brevity are 
typified by the chapters on building design. 
Neal realizes the complexity of the subject 
and devotes rather more pages to the dis-
cussion (twenty, to be exact) but is then 
seduced by this quantity of space into at-
tempting to outline details of matters such 
as furniture, lighting, and air conditioning. 
Thompson is more general and contents 
himself with eleven pages, mostly consist-
ing of a summary of Ralph Ellsworth's 
Planning the College and University Li-
brary Building, but such a brief discussion 
is almost worthless from the standpoint of 
information. 

It was noted above that the authors 
quote widely, but both their method and, 
more interestingly, their sources vary. Nei-
ther use footnotes, but Neal is quite pre-
cise giving page numbers in parentheses in 
the text and a bibliographically complete 
citation to the article at the end of the 
chapter. Thompson gives enough informa-
tion in the text to enable one to identify the 
cited work in the bibliography at the end 
of the book. Such minutiae aside, however, 
it is more interesting to note that of some-
thing over two hundred citations in Neal, 
only fifteen were of U.S. origin, while of 
forty-five works cited by Thompson, thir-
teen were U.S. And this points to the essen-
tial difference in the two works as far as 
utility to an American student is concerned. 
Neal has limited himself to the British 
scene, discussing in much detail aspects of 
British librarianship and British libraries. 
Thompson tends to paint with a broader 
brush, discussing in more general terms the 
philosophic principles which pertain to li-
brary policy and administration. That both 
are knowledgeable and experienced librari-
ans is obvious, but one has a feeling that 



422 I Colle ge & Research Libraries • November 1970 

Neal is more interested in the trees than the 
forest-particularly British trees. 

It is highly doubtful that these works will 
be of any value to librarians in this country. 
Some of Thompson is acceptable as an in-
troduction to librarianship for the neophyte. 
For others, the most one could do is to ac-
quaint one's self with some general atti-
tudes of British librarians toward a number 
of British library problems.-Gustave A. 
Harrer, U nwersity of Florida. 

Physical Sciences. The Royal Institution, 
Library of Science (being the Friday 
Evening Discourses in Physical Sciences 
held at the Royal Institution: 1851- 1939). 
Ed. by William Lawrence Bragg and 
George Porter. Barking, Essex, England: 
Elsevier Publishing Co., Ltd. 1970. 10v., 
illustrated. £63. 

Visualize a crisp winter evening in 1860, 
a warm room filled with the sweet aroma 
of pipes and cigars, and several men dis-
cussing the evening's agenda. On this par-
ticular evening, one of the speakers is John 
Tyndall who is to speak on "The Influence 
of Magnetic Force on the Electric Charge." 
Sir Tyndall's discourse is only one of sev-
eral that will be presented for discussion 
this evening, and is, as are many of the 
discourses, an illustrated lecture. You can 
place yourself in this room by reading a 
report of Tyndall's discourse plus those of 
Faraday, Brodie, Maxwell, Spottiswodde, 
Kelvin, Rayleigh, Rutherford, Heilbron, and 
many others, which are in the ten-volume 
work, Physical Sciences. 

The discourses cover physics and chem-
istry and are either in the form of a de-
scriptive abstract or in the complete text. 
The eighty-nine years covered encompass 
a span of time which saw a change from 
classical physics to new physics and the 
emergence of the basic concepts of struc-
tural organic chemistry and valency. "This 
series of Discourses therefore represents a 
cross section of the growth of physics and 
chemistry in the latter half of the nine-
teenth century and the first half of the 
twentieth century and represents a great 
turning point in the history of the physical 
sciences." 

The ten volumes are arranged in chron-
ological order with a table of contents in 
each volume. The lack of a general index 
does prevent the scholar from locating a 
particular essay when he is not sure of the 
exact date. Three additional series are now 
in preparation covering Astronomy, Earth 
Sciences, and Biological Science. After pub-
lication of these, further discourses will be 
published in four series covering Medical 
Sciences, Social Sciences, Applied Sciences, 
and History and Philosophy of Science. 

For the history of science scholars, this 
collection of "Friday Evening Discourses" 
should prove to be a valuable source of 
information. It is unfortunate that the fifty 
years prior to 1851 had no regular publica-
tion of accounts or abstracts of presented 
lectures to be preserved in the manner that 
Sir William Bragg has done so well.-
H. Robert Malinowsky, University of Kan-
sas. 

Tolkien Criticism. An Annotated Check-
list (The Serif Series, no. 11). By Rich-
ard C. West. Kent, Ohio: Kent State 
University Press, 1970. 73p. $4.25. 

Richard West compiles the writings and 
criticism of J. R. R. Tolkien, whose mete-
oric rise in popularity in this country fol-
lowed the paperback reprinting of his tril-
ogy, Lord of the Rings, in 1965. Tolkien 
Criticism aptly serves as a chronicle of the 
Tolkien phenomenon, and the author has 
chosen a fitting time to release his bibliog-
raphy-late enough to capture important 
recent criticism of Tolkien's works, but 
prompt enough to provide the scholar and 
Tolkien enthusiast with a most welcome 
symposium when interest in this English 
author is running high. 

Interest in J. R. R. Tolkien extends far 
beyond the characters and plot of the Rings 
trilogy, but there is little doubt that the 
trilogy has become the focal point for seri-
ous discussion of the man and his works. 
The American paperback reprinting of 
Lord of the Rings, by Ace and Ballantine 
in 1965, ten years after its original publica-
tion, caught the college campuses in the 
right mood for a whopping good tale of 
high adventure, set in a colorful fairyland