College and Research Libraries


150 I College & Research Libraries • March 1971 

The Index of the Guide consists of 48 
pages containing entries of four types: 
Names of manuscript groups (in bold 
type); persons; places; and subjects. The 
editor notes that the drudgery was "im-
mensely alleviated by the university com-
puter which cheerfully ingested over 20,000 
IBM cards and organized our index." Read-
ers should bear in mind that the index is a 
guide to the group descriptions in the 
Guide and therefore makes no pretense of 
offering deep access to the Collection. Con-
cluding the volume is a list of the names of 
close to 3,000 benefactors of the Southern 
Historical Collection. 

Although, as Mrs. Blosser warns in her 
preface, use of the Guide is no substitute 
for a personal visit to Chapel Hill to exam-
ine detailed descriptions and indexes (not 
to mention the papers themselves), librari-
ans and historians will welcome this addi-
tion to the bibliography of special coiiec-
tions.-Florence Blakely, Duke University 
Library. 

Reader in the Academic Library. Michael 
M. Reynolds, ed. Washington, D.C.: 
NCR Microcards Editions [1970] (Read-
er Series in Library and Information Sci-
ence). 378p. $10.95. 

First we had the case book series from 
Simmons as the basis for a new approach 
to the teaching of librarianship, now we 
have the reader series from Maryland de-
signed to serve the same purpose (as Paul 
Wasserman, sometime dean at the Universi-
ty of Maryland and general editor of this 
series, says) by bringing together a wide 
variety of material from a number of 
sources, including many from outside the 
traditional literature of librarianship, in a 
synthesizing approach. Although perhaps 
intended in some way to appeal to a wider 
audience, such works are presumably most 
effective when used in a classroom situation 
by the person who designed or selected the 
material, and they are really only useful in 
a teaching situation. A casebook or reader 
of this kind is of very limited value to the 
intelligent practicing librarian. 

One cannot, however, evaluate how ef-
fective the teaching of librarianship at a 

particular school may be by reviewing one, 
or even all, of the works in a particular se-
ries used in the teaching program. In the 
same way it is extremely difficult to review 
one of these works without having seen 
how it is used in a teaching context. Evalu-
ation of particular teaching approaches and 
their related textbooks is badly needed. In 
a review of one textbook in a series, viewed 
by itself and outside its natural habitat, the 
only meaningful evaluation a reviewer can 
perhaps make is whether or not he would 
find the book useful, either as a textbook 
or a collateral work, in a course on the same 
subject that he might teach. To fault the 
compiler for his selection, or for not having 
put together the ideal work for another 
course, is in many ways unreasonable. 

Be that as it may, I would not use this 
reader as the main textbook in a course on 
academic library administration, and would 
find it of limited value-with only approxi-
mately half of the 39 articles being worth 
using-as a supplemental reader. Some of 
the selections are outstanding and would 
be extremely useful. These include an ar-
ticle on how the new site for a college was 
selected (Banfield) and a selection from 
the Swarthmore report on the teaching li-
brary and the development of independent 
study. On the other hand, while articles 
like those by Bishop, Munthe, and Works, 
which date from the 1920s and 1930s, may 
serve to establish a historical perspective, 
they are very much out of date and with 
so much current material to be covered, are 
even of doubtful value. Even some of the 
articles from the 1950s, including Millett's 
famous comments on the financing of li-
braries, may be interesting but they hardly 
reflect the many changes, such as formula 
budgeting, that have taken place in recent 
years. The only article on libraries by a col-
lege president (from a school whose own 
library is far from adequate) is outrageous-
ly naive; one can understand why it may 
have been induded but it only ser\res to 
convey the impression that academic ad-
ministrations don't comprehend the com-
plexities and purposes of libraries. The 
main weakness of this collection, however, 
is that the coverage is weak or nonexistent 
in several of today's most important areas. 
There is nothing, for example, on formula 



budgeting, operations research, participa-
tory management, management informa-
tion or unions. The material on coopera-
tion~Reynolds' own report on intralibrary 
cooperation at Indiana University-seems 
especially inappropriate, automation and its 
impact on library administration and ser-
vice to users are weak. 

Academic library administration today is, 
if nothing else, in a state of rapid change 
and development. To capture that in a 
reader and to present a picture of the real 
problems that are now facing academic li-
brary administrators would be an extremely 
difficult task. Perhaps Mr. Reynolds man-
ages to do that in his teaching but this 
reader falls short of doing so.-N orrnan D. 
Stevens, University of Connecticut. 

American and British Genealogy and 
Heraldry: A Selected List of Books. By 
P. William Filby. Chicago, Ill.: American 
Library Association, 1970. 208p. $10.00. 

Mr. Filby's compilation attempts to cov-
er genealogical sources in the United States 
generally and by individual state, with the 
exception of Alaska. Other countries includ-
ed are Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, 
and Wales. A general coverage of heraldry 
is also presented. 

The book is extremely general in most 
cases and therefore is not much help to the 
advanced researcher. Too much area is cov-
ered to enable more than a very basic list-
ing of references; nor is it particularly con-
clusive for any particular area or state. As 
ancestors tend to hide in specific local rec-
ords, i.e. church records, land records, court 
records, and so forth, this book could not 
possibly attempt to list all of these sources. 

The compilation could be used as a basic 
reference item for libraries and as far as the 
references listed are concerned, the follow-
ing are notable: 

1. There is an excellent index, both by au-
thor and title, making it easy to locate 
any given book. 

2. There are three or four lines of descrip-
tion for each book and the publisher is 
listed, which makes it helpful to identify 
and purchase any entry if one so desires. 

3. Many of the books are "how to" books 

Recent Publications I 151 

which would help the amateur or begin-
ner in the field of genealogy. 

In the preface the author states that he 
is not a professional genealogist and that 
his book is an outgrowth of some years of 
working with genealogists and the books 
they frequently request. In this light, his 
book has merit as a beginning source list-
ing those general records that are available. 
Since the Peabody Institute Library, where 
he conducted most of his research, was en-
dowed with books about genealogy particu-
larly of English origin, his present list leans 
more heavily in this geographic direction. 
The book achieves no more and no less 
than the title indicates.-Ted F. Powell, 
Genealogical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah. 

Computer-Based Library and Information 
Systems. By J. P. Henley. New York: 
American Elsevier, 84p. $5.75. 

A book of well under one hundred pages 
covering the subject of computer-based li-
brary and information systems cannot be 
expected to be more than a superficial treat-
ment of the subject. The book is essentially 
a survey of the field drawn almost entirely 
from the cited literature. It may prove valu-
able as a basic introduction to the field, but 
will provide little for those already working 
with automated library or information sys-
tems. 

The book begins with an introduction to 
computers for those unfamiliar with them. 
In eight pages the author does a creditable 
job of indicating the basic functions of a 
computer, and describing different types 
of storage media, input/output devices and 
some recent advances in computer tech-
nology. The objectives of an automated li-
brary system are discussed. The author ad-
vocates a cctotal system" approach rather 
than a step-by-step conversion of existing 
tasks. He then goes on to describe specific 
tasks suitable for conversion to an automat-
ed system, e.g., serial records control. In a 
discussion of computer requirements, pro-
gramming languages are considered. The 
denciences of FORTRAN, ALGOL, and 
COBOL as character manipulating lan-
guages are mentioned. LISP and COIVIIT 
are cited as two examples of languages pos-