College and Research Libraries 2341 College & Research Libraries • May 1971 through eight alphabets. Two categories- the Jewish press and the non-Jewish gen- eral press-would have seemed preferable. Other distinctions could have been made more easily by a brief conspectus listing titles under appropriate categories. It should also be noted that annual reports of organizations are to be included in a later volume dealing with the organiza- tions. However, other periodicals published by these organizations are included. It is unfortunate that all such serials could not be included here, especially when other publications of the same body are listed. Nevertheless, such shortcomings are mi- nor compared with the great benefit to be derived from this list. The scholarly world will be especially grateful since the LEI's serial holdings are not reported in the Union List of Serials. LEI's collection of such serial material is probably the most extensive outside Germany and may, for that matter, even surpass any in Germany. It is a great boon, therefore, to have this record of holdings available at last. The 450 biographic items listed in Part C are chiefly unpublished manuscripts, with a few privately printed biographies also included. Items are arranged alpha- betically by biographee and are accompa- nied by lengthy and helpful annotations. Most of the biographies deal with German Jews of the nineteenth and twentieth cen- turies. Such biographies and autobiogra- phies are, of course, valuable source mate- rial for the historian, and it is good to have them brought to the attention of scholars. In this connection, mention may also be made of another extensive corpus of Ger- man-Jewish biographical material in manu- script-the 253 biographies submitted to the "Life in Germany" contest conducted in 1940 by the noted sociologist, the late Gordon Allport of Harvard University, and his colleagues, and deposited in the Har- vard College Library. The volume is attractively printed, handsomely bound, and adorned with twenty-three plates. Its usefulness is much enhanced by a one hundred and thirty- page index to names, places, titles, and general subjects. The introduction to the volume also includes a brief history of German-Jewish scholarship. The three areas selected for inclusion in this first volume have been wisely cho- sen in terms of immediate utility. All three, but especially the bibliographies of peri- odicals and biographies, are self-contained units-any one of which well justifies the publication of this volume. All three to- gether make this a most valuable addition to research collections in bibliography, Eu- ropean (especially German) histmy, and, of course, Jewish studies. With this first volume a model of bibliographic scholar- ship, the remaining volumes of this cata- log will be eagerly awaited.-Charles Ber- lin, Harvard College Library. The Case for Faculty Status for Academic Librarians. Lewis C. Branscomb, ed. ACRL Monograph 33 . Chicago: Ameri- can Library Association, 1970. This book is, as its title indicates and as Lewis Branscomb, the editor, states in his preface, an attempt "to make the case for faculty status" on behalf of academic librarians. Unfortunately, for the cause is a worthy one, it does not succeed. The arguments are generally weak, often un- supported by the evidence presented, and sometimes contradictory. The thinking is frequently muddy, and implications are seldom carried through to their conclusions where the difficult decisions and risks are- for example, the question of modifying the fixed work week for librarians, the need to overhaul library governance to make it more academic, or the problems of recruit- ing academic librarians who are as able and motivated as their faculty counter- parts. There is a surprising amount of self- deception in this book regarding what the academic role is, what the librarian now does, and the status quo in libraries and li- brary service. Evaluations of the academic contributions of the librarian and parallels between those contributions and the fac- ulty's are touched on only peripherally and often in an unconvincing way, as when the preparation of library exhibits is treated as academic creativity or super- vision of personnel is argued as academic service to one's college or university (is the chief custodian academic?) . Through many of the essays, the commitment to a continuation of the present bureaucratic organization of college and university li- brarians-so antithetical to a genuine aca- demic situation-is barely masked and sur- faces quickly over such questions as the need to preserve the fixed work week, such terms as "supervision," and such con- tentions as "many if not most professional positions in libraries increasingly tend to become administrative in the sense that they involve supervision of other people and responsibility for planning and on- going operations." The essays themselves form a curious amalgam which does not hang together well as an argument. Five are based on questionnaires and attempt to use the data gathered as evidence to support argu- ments related to faculty status generally or to separate elements of it, such as ap- pointment and promotion criteria, study and research support, and academic rank. Unfortunately, the evidence does not in- dicate that many academic librarians cur- rently have faculty status, nor is it (if, in fact, this kind of evidence can be) well- marshalled to support contentions that fac- ulty status should be conferred on librar- ians. In fact, the most illuminating and thoughtful of these studies ("The Status of Librarians in Four Year State Colleges and Universities") draws quite a different conclusion: that only a small minority of academic librarians now have full faculty status, although a majority seem to believe that they do. This indication of the amount of delusion regarding their own status that is currently present among aca- demic librarians provides an interesting commentary on some of the more optimis- tic generalizations made elsewhere in this book, as well as on the profession itself. Several essays attempt to project models or programs for academic status. Of these, the best is editor Branscomb's straight- forward treatment of tenure, closely paral- leling faculty tenure but with useful modi- fications for librarians. The others are weakened by a willingness to accept low standards and by an uncritical approach to bureaucratic restraints. However, they do contain some useful suggestions, such as Arthur McAnally's proposals for ways to provide librarians with more time for re- search. Recent Publications / 235 The rest of the contributions are a very mixed bag. The historic summary of pleas by librarians for improved status, extend- ing back almost a century, was interesting, but certainly not encouraging, to this re- viewer. The report of the special ALA committee that recently investigated the status problems of California State Col- lege librarians is perhaps most noteworthy for its contention that faculty titles will lead to full faculty status-rather soundly disproved elsewhere in this same volume- and its willingness to postpone real change in such areas as salaries and leaves. The treatment of specialists in academic li- braries, because of its rather broad defini- tion-including business officer, personnel manager, and computer programmer (why not bookbinder or graphics designer?), as well as selection specialist and bibliogra- pher-negates the strong case that can be made for improved status on the basis of contributions that librarian specialists are currently making in the development, bib- liographical control, and exploitation or use of library collections and instruction in library research. The essay on the status of nonprofessional library personnel seems rather inappropriate in this volume. What is perhaps most discouraging about this book is that it is, as its editor notes, the primary expression of the ad hoc Com- mittee on Academic Status of the Univer- sity Libraries Section, Association of Col- ·. lege and Research Libraries. Eleven of the fourteen papers were written by commit- tee members and have the "approval of the committee." The editor was chairman of the committee at its dissolution, and this dissolution was requested by the com- mittee "upon the publication of this mono- graph, feeling that its basic responsibility had been fulfilled." As the primary argu- ment developed by the largest and most influential professional organization repre- senting academic librarians, during a dec- ade of vigorous growth in libraries and li- brary services, and for a goal toward which "some thousands of academic librarians" have demonstrated "very strong interest," this monograph represents a serious fail- ure not only of intention but also of re- sponsibility. The case for a substantially improved 236 I College & Research Libraries • May 1971 status for college and university librarians can be made. (Whether that status should be "academic" or "faculty" is a question that deserves much more attention than it received in this book.) However, such a case must be based on a serious analy- sis of the role that the librarian is or should be playing within the academic community, and of the kind of status-in- cluding involvement in library governance, work week, and relations with other mem- bers of the academic community, as well as salary, leaves, promotion system, and tenure-which that role deserves. Unfor- tunately, a serious analysis of the academ- ic librarian's role is absent from this vol- ume.-Eldred Smith, University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley. System Scope for Library Automation and Generalized Information Storage and Retrieval at Stanford University. Stan- ford, California: Stanford University, Feb. 1970. 157p. Occasionally the report literature pro- duces a document of such import that it should be read and its implications pon- dered by all professionals connected with the information sciences. This report is such a document. Here in concrete form, uncluttered by the acres of blue sky so prevalent in the professional literature, are th e first realistic intimations of what to- morrow has in store for the information science professions. This publication is both a paradigm for a systems study and a technical report on a collaborative research effort at Stanford between the libraries, the computer cen- ter, and a selected group of subject de- partments. Its purpose is " ... to define the scope of a manual-automated system to serve the libraries and the teaching and research community of Stanford Univer- sity .... This document defines the library operations to be supported, and the biblio- graphic information storage and retrieval capabilities to be provided in the system. It is directed to librarians who will use the system, to research and computer per- sonnel who are developing it, and to uni- versity administrators and directors of li- braries who need to make the policy deci- sions on the installation of such a sys- tem .... " ( p.3.) The libraries and the computer center at Stanford have long been on the cutting edge of research into libra1y automation and information retrieval. During 1964- 66, the undergraduate library produced and successfully used a book catalog. By 1968 the library and the computer center had jointly initiated and received funding for the two major research projects de- scribed in this report. The project involving library automation is known by the acro- nym BALLOTS (Bibliographic Automa- tion of Large Library Operations on a Time-sharing System) . The second proj- ect involves information retrieval and is known by the acronym SPIRES (Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System or Stanford Public Information Retrieval Sys- tem). SPIRES is a fully automated on- line bibliographic search system which al- lows the remote terminal user to make a variety of search and output requests. (p.43) At the time this report was written, it had been operating as a prototype for about one year. BALLOTS was funded by the U.S. Office of Education up until the summer of 1970, while SPIRES is still (as far as this author has been able to dis- cover) funded by the National Science Foundation. Goals and the strategy used in reaching them are complementary, en- abling both projects to collaborate in the sharing of facilities, hardware, software, and staff. The value of this report lies not so much in the fact that it chronicles a research effort in the microcosm of Stanford, but more in its use as a model or prototype for a systems effort and in its discussion of the pitfalls which await the unwa1y on the path to library automation and informa- tion retrieval. Two points about the report are espe- cially worth the reader's attention. The explanation of batch vs on-line search logic ( p.45ff) is particularly good and would be of great value to those contemplating on- line capabilities but not thoroughly con- versant with the constraints of machine logic. The same can be said for the discus- sion of file management. (p.54ff) One minor fault this author found with the re- port was its lack of any discussion and comparison with other systems. The only reference this author could find to other