College and Research Libraries


162 I College & Research Libraries • March 1973 

ter Asheim on "Current Problems and 
Prospects in American Library Education," 
and Herman Fussier on "Some Aspects of 
Technology and Change in Relation to Uni-
versity Libraries." These papers deserve a 
wider reading audience than this volume is 
likely to attract. 

H the platitudes and rhetoric of amity, 
usually generated by a conference of this 
sort, can be ignored in some of the papers, 
publication of the Proceedings was justified. 
There would not seem to exist a more use-
ful single volume containing a summary of 
current thinking on research libraries in both 
nations. The papers are recommended read-
ing for all whose interests gravitate toward 
research libraries, information access, and 
(most especially) the international aspects 
of librarianship.-Cecil K. Byrd, Indiana 
University Libraries, Bloomington. 

Franklin, Colin. The Private Presses. Ches-
ter Springs, Penn.: Dufour, 1969. 240p. 
$17.50. 
This brief but appealing work treats the 

activity of fine printing in England from the 
late nineteenth century to the Second World 
War, as created by private presses which 
were owned or controlled by individuals 
who put their own stamp on the products. 
Although Mr. Franklin refers frequently to 
the works of these presses as representing 
a movement and does show interesting in-
fluences and interrelations among them, his 
book is essentially composed of separate 
sketches, each devoted to a selected printer 
and press. His approach in presenting these 
rather discrete essays is not unlike that 
which he attributes to bibliophiles, of whom 
he says: "Collectors look at their things with 
love, preserve them worthily and show them 
to those who can appreciate." 

Recognizing that "accounts of books can 
be tedious to read," Mr. Franklin concen-
trates upon lively sketches of the printers 
and the general tenor of their production. 
He does make good and generally succinct 
analytical comments on specific books and 
he provides some interesting allusions to the 
tastes of the times, as in his amusing ac-
count of the arts and crafts movement of 
guild socialism, although he does not at-
tempt a fully unified narrative nor a devel-
oped critique of printing style. But Mr. 
Franklin has a nice eye for typography and 

a well-cultivated taste in approaching it so 
that he is able to draw from the books them-
selves a sense of their printers and the pur-
poses of their presses. This allows him to 
make some sharp comparisons: 

Morris had merry pleasure from most of 
the Kelmscott books-the medieval world 
he loved, the old poems and stories. There 
is aesthetic gaiety in some of the Vale Press 
books, French charm in Eragny, and Hom-
by's press could be domestic, entertaining, 
homely as well as serious. Nothing less 
than a fixed moral vision governed the 
taste of the Doves Press; with Cobden-
Sanderson at the heart of it . . . 

Upon occasion Mr. Franklin finds a need 
to take issue with the idea of judging these 
works by what he once calls "the awe of the 
sale room," yet he himself seems quite af-
fected both by book prices and by the 
names of collectors, and the work concludes 
with a so-called Bibliography by David Lin-
coln whose only real contribution is the fur-
nishing of auction prices. Indeed, Mr. 
Franklin himself addresses his last chapter 
to the collector's concerns rather than end-
ing on a summation of typographic history 
or an analysis of the art of bookmaking. Yet, 
despite some disparity in purpose and tone, 
here is a useful, lively, and perceptive 
study.-]ames D. Hart, University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley. 

Schlebecker, John T. Bibliography of Books 
and Pamphlets on the History of Agri-
culture in the United States ••. 1607-
1967. Santa Barbara, Calif.: American 
Bibliographical Center-Clio Press, 1969. 
Paper $5.50. Cloth $15.00. 
This is an updated version of the classic 

A Bibliography of the History of Agricul-
ture in the United States, by Everett E. Ed-
wards, published in 1930 as U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture Miscellaneous publica-
tion no. 84. The biennial Eunice Rockwell 
Oberley Award was presented to Mr. Schle-
becker in June 1971 for his work. 

It is a listing of 2,042 histories, govern-
ment reports, biograp'hies, and literary 
works which portray farming and rural life 
in all parts of the United States from the 
earliest settlement through 1967. Except for 
its subject, the new work differs consider-
ably from the Edwards bibliography. For 

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instance, because of the vast amount of ma-
terial currently being published, references 
to periodicals and documentary sources 
were omitted, except for those in narrative 
form. 

There is a difference also in its arrange-
ment, which is a single alphabetical list by 
author. In his introduction, Mr. Schlebecker 
cites avoidance of the duplication of entries 
as the deciding factor for this choice. The 
reader, however, will regret the absence of 
the subject, period, and state subdivisions 
of the 1930 work, and that it was not pos-
sible to devise some way, such as brief cita-
tions referring to the primary entries, to re-
tain the more convenient topical arrange-
ment. 

This drawback is partially compensated 
for by an extensive title and subject index, 
consisting of useful entries such as Nine-
teenth Century, Southwest, and New Deal 
as well as the names of works included in 
the main alphabet. The index would have 
been improved by further breakdown of 
subject headings such as "Federal farm aid," 
which may require the reader to refer back 
to as many as 200 separate entries, and also 
by an alphabetical rather than a random ar-
rangement of subdivisions under headings 
such as "Biography," a procedure followed 
inconsistently in some instances, e.g. under 
the heading "Autobiography." Another fac-
tor which must be kept in mind is that the 
names of authors listed in the main alphabet 
are not repeated in the index, except as a 
secondary author or editor of another work. 

The choice of titles is interesting and 
varied enough to satisfy almost anyone. 
Nevertheless, in spite of the author's reluc-
tance to use the term preliminary or selec-
tive, the bibliography must be considered 
representative rather than complete, and ad-
ditional titles for inclusion will immediately 
come to mind. There are, for example, the 
highly interesting Rural Life studies issued 
in the 1940s by the U.S. Bureau of Agricul-
tural Economics, which describe the diverse 
cultures of six rural communities. Perhaps 
the difficulty is in applying the yardstick for 
inclusion, that at least half of the work must 
be about farming. 

Approximately 15 percent of the entries 
are annotated, a particularly helpful feature 
because of the way the bibliography is or-
ganized. A few errors have crept into the 

Recent Publications I 163 

annotations. For example, the time and lo-
cale of Gladys Hasty Carroll's As the Earth 
Turns have been incorrectly attributed to 
late nineteenth century in the state of Con-
necticut, whereas the mixture of automobile 
and horsedrawn traffic on the roads, and the 
introduction of a minor character who was 
a commercial pilot, dates the story much 
closer to its copyright date of 1933, in a set-
ting which is clearly Maine. 

The introduction states that 71 percent 
of the titles included are new since 1930. 
It is probable that most users will consider 
the Schlebecker work as supplementary 
rather than as a replacement for the earlier 
bibliography. 

Recommended for students of agricultural 
history and for everyone who enjoys reading 
about country life.-Catharine ]. Reynold.Y, 
University of Colorado. 

Nemeyer, Carol A. Scholarly Reprint Pub-
lishing in the United States. New York: 
Bowker, 1972. 272p. $12.50. 
Reprinting of older books and journals 

is a publishing phenomenon which thrived 
in the United States particularly in the 
1960s because of the enormous educational 
growth, the subsequent need for instant li-
braries, and the free and rather indiscrim-
inate How and use of funds. 

Carol N em eyer estimates that between 
85,000 and 120,000 titles in hard copy and 
probably several millions in microform have 
been made available again by a highly di-
versified group of approximately 300 Amer-
ican publishers. It is a market of indeed 
staggering proportions, which has created 
considerable confusion both with producers 
and buyers, especially when the economic 
conditions began to change about two years 
ago. 

To uncover and describe typical aspects 
in the motivation and activities of these pub-
lishers was the main objective of Nemeyer's 
survey, done between 1968 and 1971 as 
work toward a doctoral degree at Columbia. 
For practical reasons numerous limitations 
had to be set on the scope of the survey; so 
many in fact that it is sometimes hard to 
distinguish which generalizations touch 
upon the nature of the reprint trade and 
which were predetermined by the choice of 
limitations. One of the most severe restric-
tions of the survey is N em eyer's (under-

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