College and Research Libraries BOOK REVIEWS Dewey, Melvil. Dewey Decimal Classi- fication and Relative Index. 18th ed. Lake Placid Club, N.Y.: Forest Press, 1971. 3v: viii, 2692p. If "Dewey is Dead," the corpse is mighty lively. With zest it heeds the an- cient command: "Be fruitful and multiply." Father Melvil' s pamphlet of 1876 in this, its eighteenth generation, boasts three fat volumes. In the words of the black box: You've come a long way, baby, to get where you are today. Volume 1 opens with introductory ma- terial: Godfrey Dewey's brief memorial to his father (LJ Dec. 1, 1951); a statement by the Forest Press of DDC history, owner- ship, editorial, and publishing arrangements; a short and helpful Preface by Frances Hinton, Chairman DCEPC; a thorough Editor's Introduction, useful as always, by Benjamin A. Custer; a Glossary; an Index to Preface, Ec.ditor' s Introduction, and Glos- sary; and the usual filial reprint of Dewey's Introduction to Dewey 12. But the bulk of Volume 1 is given over to the "Tables." Although they are auxiliary tables to be used in building numbers, they are now called simply "Tables" while the main classification schedules, for- merly referred to as "tables" or "general tables," are now officially called "Sched- ules." There are seven Tables: 1. Standard Subdivisions; 2. Areas; 3. Subdivisions of Individual Literatures (used throughout 810-899); 4. Subdivisions of Individual Languages (used throughout 420- 499) ; 5. Racial, Ethnic, National Groups; 6. Lan- guages (used where numbers were former- ly divided like 420- 490); 7. Persons (used wherever numbers were formerly divided like 001- 999 or 920.1- 928.9). Thus, with the Tables, "divide like" becomes simply "add to." A few pages at the end of Vol- ume 1 contain lists applying to the sched- ules: 1. Relocations and Discontinued Num- Recent Publications hers; 2. Three-figure Numbers not in Use; and 3. Summaries. Volume 2 consists of the Schedules, in- cluding discontinued and unused numbers and two completely new "Phoenix" Sched- ules 340 Law and 510 Mathematics. Vol- ume 3 consists of the Relative Index, and (to help in reclassifying to the Phoenix Schedules) the obsolescent sehedules 340 and 510 reprinted for the last time along with Tables of Concordance showing "the correct class numbers from editions 17 and 18 for a substantial list of legal and mathe- matical topics." Thus, more than ever before, Dewey is a number building device rather than a mere list of numbers. The three elements of number building (tables, schedules, and index) are each in a single volume and the classifier can have all volumes open be- fore him as he works-no need to shuffie through many pages in a single volume any more. Apart from the Phoenix Schedules, there are 396 relocations, less than half as many as in Dewey 17 and one-fourth as many as in Dewey 16. The promise of Dewey 17 (p.46) still holds: "A reasonable amount of continuing change through relocation is not only desirable but inevitable." The war against the WASP continues in such things as the Area Table relocation of In- donesia, the Philippines, etc. from "Oce- ania" to "Asia" and the Editor's Introduc- tion suggestions about optional provisions ( p.27) and devices for giving more em- phasis to "minor" subjects (p.4@ ff.). A modem classification, but a classifica- tion without jargon, Dewey 18 may be in- tricate now and then but it is never be- yond understanding even though we may not agree with every detail it provides. Perhaps the chief question about Dewey 18 lies outside the book itself. Use of Dewey 18 on LC cards began January 1, 1971, but Dewey 18 was not published till late in the year. Thus for many months I 331 332 I College & Research Libraries • July 1972 libraries were expected to use classifica- tion numbers which they could under- stand only to the extent that D DC Addi- tions, Notes and Decisions Spring 1971 rather skimpily explained them. Does Dew- ey 18 thus suggest that library classifica- tion, like library cataloging, has ceased to be a cottage industry with a classifier in every library? Has library classification, in- stead, become a manufacturing monopoly requiring intelligent and imaginative clas- sifiers at the factories but only skilled tech- nicians to install the ready-made product in individual libraries?-Paul S. Dunkin, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University Gihoy, Marion, and Rothstein, Samuel, eds. As We Remember It: Interviews with Pioneering Librarians of British Colum- bia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, School of Librarianship, 1970. 163p. "I was on the library staff, in Hamilton [Ontario]. Well, I was the third part of the librarian. There were three of us taken on as one person, and we had to work one week in three and stay by the other two weeks in case somebody had a headache or was away. We supplied in turn. We got five dollars a week for this . . . every week we worked." This is Muriel Ffoulkes speaking of her first library position, back in 1915 or 1916, when librarianship in Canada was still very young, back when the first library school in Toronto opened its doors, "not under the auspices of the University, of course. Mr. Carson was the Inspector of Public Li- braries. He started this school, and I was one of four sent down from the Hamilton library. And it was there that I met Lillian H. Smith. . . ." Thus Muriel Ffoulkes re- members, and recounts her memories to Marion Gilroy and to posterity in this charm- ing record of the pioneering days of li- brarianship in British Columbia and in Can- ada. No scholarly history this. The interviews are printed just as they were taped, for "The interviews recorded here by and large stand quite well by themselves, and it has not been felt that an extensive edi- torial commentary was needed." The re- sult has all the casual frankness ("Muriel Page, a librarian from Toronto, was cho- sen." "You know her?" "Yes, I seem to re- member her. She was an awful pest."); all the warm emotion ( "Essae May Culver was head of the whole state library pro- gramme, and she was a splendid person.") ; and, unfortunately, some of the infuriating vagueness (" . . . our headquarters were in Vernon, but they had a rather sticky situation there, too, and I think if we had just had a little longer there, we could have fixed it up.") of an after dinner con- versation. Certainly no scholarly history; but, on the other hand, no dull, heavily docu- mented compendium of minutiae in the ap- parent tradition of Canada's only other type of substantial library history, the doctoral dissertation. As We Remember It begins with the initial and excellent premise that the living history of much of our library development lies largely untapped within the memories of our retired librarians; and, under the able direction of Professors Gil- roy and Rothstein, the attractively format- ted, paper-backed volume proceeds in a se- ries of interviews to strip-mine this pre- cious lode. The technique is not an unhappy one, for, once the reader acclimatizes himself to the vernacular repetition of "quite" and "well" and "you see"-a repetition which might well pass unnoticed in the dappled flow of conversation but which can jar when cast into the more lasting mould of print-the nuances of informal discussion come through remarkably well. This re- viewer knew none of the interviewees per- sonally, yet, helped by the photograph of each included in the volume, he began to form a picture of the protagonists. Dr. Helen Stewart, the dynamic, precise intel- lectual, with enormous personal charm and drive; Margaret Clay, perhaps more legal- istic and traditional as a librarian, but also with the drive and personal dedication which must have been a sine qua non of those early days in the development of Canadian libraries; Charles Morison, the only man in the quartet, much more "vir- ile" and extroverted than the historical stereotype of the male librarian would have us believe and not narrowly and ex- clusively a "librarian" at all; and the chat- ty, opinionated, wholly likeable Mrs. Muri- el Ffoulkes. Such individualists are the