College and Research Libraries


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 



raw data of history; and, if at times their 
reminiscences provide clues rather than an-
swers, the quality of their responses to 
perhaps not always inspired leads is an 
overall strength rather than a weakness in 
this type of "history." 

Until very recently the number of sub-
stantial Canadian library histories could be 
counted on the fingers of one hand ex-
cluding the thumb, and the valid syn-
thesis could be counted on the thumb. In-
deed, even that synthesis, Antonio Drolet's 
Les Bibliotheques Canadiennes, 1604-1960 
(Montreal: Cercle du Livre de France, 
1965) has been published only in French 
and is, perhaps for that reason, little known 
outside of Quebec. Moreover, Drolet's pio-
neer venture, courageous though it was, 
suffered severely from the lack of specific 
histories upon which to draw; and in this 
respect served merely to underscore the 
sad state of Canadian historiography. As 
We Remember It forms, therefore, an im-
portant addition to the source materials of 
library history, and one may now hope 
that Dr. Rothstein, recently freed from 
oveiTiding administrative demands, will 
find the time and the incentive to produce 
a scholarly interpretation which would add 
perspective to the data, preserved with 
such foresight in these engaging memoirs. 

"Try to remember, and if you remember, 
follow, follow, follow ... . "-]. P. Wilkin-
son, Professor, School of Library Science, 
University of Toronto 

Andriot, John L., ed. Guide to U.S. Gov-
ernment Serials & Periodicals. McLean, 
Virginia, Documents Index, 1971. 4 vol-
umes in 3. Paper. $60.00. LC No. 75-
7027. 
"As a general rule, the public docu-

ments have been a despised class of books." 
The statement is Melvil Dewey's, spoken 
in 1877. Later he added, "A few United 
States documents are regarded as valuable. 
Specialists have learned that they contain 
much which is of the utmost importance 
to them, and which they can obtain no-
where else." Today not only specialists but 
anybody dealing in the commodity called 
information, values the content of govern-
ment publications. As far as their unstan-
dardized, whimsical, erratic, multifarious 
and unpredictable form is concerned they 

Recent Publications I 333 

are, if not despised, at least tacitly frowned 
upon by most users and librarians alike. 
Only one aspect of Dewey's statement lost 
its validity. Today few government pub-
lications would be identified as books. 
Compounding the problems of their han-
dling, a frightfully high percentage of 
them is issued in serial form. 

Andriot' s Guide is a courageous and 
quite successful effort to lighten two kinds 
of headache of the library world: govern-
ment documents and serials. It must be 
made clear at the outset that the Guide is 
a directory and not an index. It provides 
bibliographic control of federally published 
serials and periodicals by several listings: 
(a) An alphabetic list of U.S. government 
agencies, commissions, and committees, with 
a brief history of each, (b) a classified list 
of Superintendent of Documents numbers 
with the names of agencies they represent, 
(c) classified list of current agencies (in 
existence on January 1, 1971) with an-
notated entries of their serial publications, 
(d) classified list of abolished agencies 
with their annotated publications and dis-
continued SuDocs numbers, (e) agency 
and title indexes. The Guide is in its sev-
enth edition. Since its first publication in 
1962, numerous, substantial changes attest 
to the responsiveness of its editor to spe-
cific information problems connected with 
government serials. What are some of 
these problems, and to what extent are 
they helped by the Guide? 

1) Federal government agencies, with 
their frequent reorganizational changes 
present a tangled pattern. The maze is 
carried over into the classification scheme 
of federal publications, which mirrors the 
agencies' organizational structure. The 
Guide lists and briefly describes 2,216 
agencies in the authority file of volume 1. 
Especially useful are lists of House and 
Senate committees and special presidential 
commissions. Unfortunately, the lack of a 
subject approach limits the value of this 
section. (The Government Organization 
Manual provides comparable directory in-
formation in conjunction with a subject in-
dex.) [For instance, somebody interested 
in agencies with an environmental con-
cern will find only three listings. The 
"Agency index" in volume 4 will lead him 
to an additional seven, which still do not