College and Research Libraries 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- 152 I College & Research Libraries • March 1971 sibly suited for information retrieval (with reservation). Conspicuously lacking in the discussion is any mention of SNOBOL or PL-1. This discussion is followed by men- tion of the primary types of computer file structures, e.g., sequential, list, and tree files. A chapter is devoted to information re- trieval systems. The chapter covers most of the important work done in the field: co- ordinate indexing, thesauri, SDI systems, KWIC indexing, automatic classification ex- periments, clustering, and so forth. Each topic is mentioned and briefly discussed. The last third of the book is devoted to examples of IBM 1620 computer programs written for a library system. The data input program, the sort program, and the search program are presented in great detail, in- cluding sample output and ten pages of flow chart. These programs essentially con- sist of the author's efforts at an experimen- tal searching program to retrieve author names by variant spellings. Although the search program is of some interest, such long and detailed examples appear out of place in such a short book. It is material better suited for a journal article. My major objection to the book is not that it is superficial (since this can be turned into an asset in a general introduc- tion to a subject), but rather that the book is fundamentally misleading for the unin- formed reader (the only type of reader for which the book is appropriate). It gives the impression that to develop an automated library system all one need do is buy a com- puter and hire a programmer. Even in the final chapter, a discussion of the "philoso- phy of a machine-based system," the only difficulty mentioned is that of automating fact retrieval. Although we all seek simple and straightforward solutions to problems of library automation and information re- trieval, it seems a disservice to those enter- ing the field to give the impression of sim- plicity.-Victor Rosenberg, University of California, Berkeley. Systems Analysis of a University Library; Final Report on a Research Project. By Michael Buckland, et al. (University of Lancaster Library Occasional Papers, no. 4). Bailrigg, Lancaster, University of Lancaster Library, 1970. 57p. The application of operations-research techniques to libraries is a recent phenome- non, and most library administrators prob- ably shudder at the sight of equations pur- porting to represent the behavior of some part of their library system. Some people shudder at the sight of any equation, but many are also concerned about what seems to them the simple-minded nature of the idea that a library process can be represent- ed by equations at all. The present report presents two kinds of answers to concerns such as the latter class of readers express. On the one hand, the authors candidly ad- mit that their work is fragmentary and ex- ploratory, and can hardly be anything more, given our ignorance of our users' be- havior. (What on earth do faculty members do with · those books that they keep for six months?) But they also point out that it is studies such as the present one that help to point out just what it is we need to know before more advanced work can be under- taken. The second answer that the authors can make to persons skeptical about the value of operations research is to point to prac- tical results. Their studies of the effect of various loan policies upon the availability of books gave them sufficient evidence to induce the University of Lancaster to ac- cept important changes in loan policies- the evidence being that the new loan policy would, by all indications, appreciably im- prove some aspects of the library's service to its users. Another study showed that at a small increase in annual cost, the library could establish a bindery (it had been using commercial binders) and thereby ef- fect other improvements in service. This report then reflects both the short- comings and some of the potential values of operations research as applied to li- braries. Its title may be misleading for it by no means reports the results of a systematic analysis of a complete library system. It is rather a report on several studies of various facets of a library system. There is, for ex- ample; ·a section on the frequently discussed and a'nalyzed problem of acquisition and retention policies, with particular attention