College and Research Libraries parison. However, taking only Pope's work into consideration, the median time for catalog copy to appear in 1969 was ninety- one days. Whether or not the time-lag has increased since 1961, this would still make it difficult for a library to decide whether to wait for LC copy or do original catalog- ing. In fact, Pope concludes at this point that the Library of Congress is incapable of closing the time gap. In regard to the second question, a com- parison was made between entries as they appeared in prepublication sales catalogs and subsequent Library of Congress entries. The agreement between the two on most items was remarkably high, and the one item which showed the most discrepancy, the collation statement, is not even present- ly included in the CIP record. It is in this area that Pope has the most to contribute. Elsewhere in the book it is pointed out that delays in producing catalog copy result from a book being "cataloged" many times -by the publisher, by the Copyright Of- fice, by the Library of Congress, and by in- dividual libraries. Pope feels that, in as much as the Library of Congress is willing to accept intact cataloging provided by foreign countries, it should also be willing to accept cataloging by publishers. This would be more likely to happen if a mutually acceptable manual of bibliograph- ic description were to be adopted. As of this review, the CIP project has yet to be fully evaluated, although there are in- dications that it is becoming more viable. This is shown by the fact that slightly more than 50 percent of the American book pub- lishing output is represented. If publishers find it worth their while to cooperate, and if libraries across the country are willing to accept CIP copy, then this book will simply be a record of past failures. Nevertheless, Pope's extensive research forms a basis for any future studies in this area.-Dianne ]. Ellsworth, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. j-The University-The Library. Papers pre- sented by Samuel Rothstein, Richard Blackwell, Archibald MacLeish at York University, Toronto, on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Scott Library, 30 October, 1971. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1972. 62 p. Recent Publications I 491 This slender, impeccably printed volume contains, in addition to the essays by the three authors mentioned in the title, a pref- ace and introduction by Thomas F. O'Con- nell, and brief biographical sketches of the three authors who were recipients of hon- orary degrees at the colloquy. Dedication of a new library building is a highly important affair in an institution of learning, and perhaps even more so at York University, because of its comparative youthfulness and rapidity of growth-both in student enrollment and in library re- sources. The three chief participants in the dedi- cation represented different but allied pro- fessions. They addressed themselves to the topic: "The U niveristy-The Library." Samuel Rothstein, library educator, sketched briefly some of the academic and cur- ricular changes of the last century in higher education, which have led to the rise of a trained, service-directed class of professionals in modem libraries. Richard Blackwell spoke of the close dependence existing between librarian and bookseller, drawing with charm and discernment upon his experiences with the firm of B. H. Blackwell. Archibald MacLeish, poet, was con- cerned with the importance of a book col- lection as more than a mere institutional statistic. One paragraph quoted from his re- marks may suffice to indicate his affirma- tions in the essay, "The Premise of Mean- ing": For the existence of a library, the fact of its existence, is, in itself and of itself, an assertion-a proposition nailed like Lu- ther's to the door of time. By standing where it does at the centre of the univer- sity-which is to say at the centre of our intellectual lives-with its books in a cer- tain order on its shelves and its cards in a certain structure in their cases, the true library asserts that there is indeed a "mys- tery of things." Or, more precisely, it as- serts that the reason why the «things" com- pose a mystery is that they seem to mean: that they fall, when gathered together, into a kind of relationship, a kind of wholeness, as though all these different and dissimilar reports, these bits and pieces of experience, manuscripts in bot- tles, messages from long before, from deep within from miles beyond, belonged to- gether and might, if understood together, 492 I College & Research Libraries • November 1973 spell out the meaning which the mystery implies. ( p. 53) The final two pages of the book contain a brief account of the Shakespeare Head Press, written by Basil Blackwell, the sole survivor of the original company. It should also be recorded that the end-sheets and a centerfold cmitain reproduced interior and exterior views of Scott Library.-Cecil K. Byrd, Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana. I Kronus, Carol L. and Crowe, Linda, eds. Libraries and Neighborhood Informa- tion Centers. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library Sci- ence, 1972. 142 p. (Allerton Park Insti- tute, no. 17). Carol Kronus and Linda Crowe com- piled the various papers presented at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Li- brary Science devoted to library-based neighborhood information centers to form this monographic, but decidedly weak, syn- thesis. Unquestionably, the conference itself must have been a far more exciting and re- warding experience than the simple gather- ing of the papers presented. There are too many questions asked by the authors and papers presented, too many issues raised, too many simplistic answers to enormously complex problems, and too little interactive research to allow this work a more success- ful place on people's reading lists. Even though the conference was held at the U ni- versity of Illinois on October 24-27, 1971, the results are now outmoded, some condi- tions significantly changed in the library world, and other projects quiet but none- theless failures. Why? I will not attempt at this point in time to relate the significance of this work to the world of academic libraries, but will leave that issue for the end of this review. It seems more appropriate first to discuss the shortcomings of this publication. To begin with, the articles are repetitious and dis- jointed. There needs to be an interwelding of research, theory, experimentation, li- brary operational modification based on cir- cumstances at hand, and reworking of pre- viously held concepts or theories about the inner city residents, labeled the urban poor-. Information provided by each of the papers related to a specific subject or project, with occasional mention of similar situations. As such, each paper could stand on its own merits, but would add very little to the co- hesiveness of the whole. What was missing in the monograph was the give and take that must have existed between the participants, the audience, and the editors. The exchanges that might have congealed these library and information vagaries with the dispassionate research findings presented by nonlibrary experts could have materially improved the de- velopment of a polemic on the role of li- braries with regard to information services. Instead, the reader is left to fend for him- self. The necessary amalgam to make these papers a valuable interwelding of theory and practice is missing. Furthermore, the success of many of these neighborhood in- formation centers is now in question, par- ticularly with the decline or absence of fed- eral supporting funds. The question never asked in this work is whether such services are the province of the public library. Is this where public libraries should concen- trate their efforts.? As an academic librarian, I am disap- pointed by the inability of researchers and librarians alike to distill the crucial issues in one setting and project their significance into another. Urban academic libraries al- ready are feeling the impact of a need for more assistance in providing information and services to their respective academic and urban communities. How should they cope with this problem? For those librari- ans with great imagination and dedication, this publication may generate some projects or goals. Unfortunately, for most librarians it will remain a closed book.-Robert P. Haro, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.