College and Research Libraries 300 I College & Research Libraries • July 1974 present draft is seen as a replacement for the remaining AACR chapters in Part III: 12 (Motion Pictures and Filmstrips), 14 ( Phonorecords), and 15 (Pictures, Designs, etc.). The format of the rules is that Chapter 1 (General Rules) sets out the general prin- ciples, procedures, and requirements com- mon to all the non-book materials. Chap- ters 2 (Graphics and Three-dimensional Representations), 3 (Motion Pictures), and 4 (Sound Recordings) are supplementary to Chapter 1; each sets out only the special provisions necessary for the range of ma- terials it covers, where these extend, mod- ify, or otherwise differ from the general provisions of Chapter 1. In only one area was the committee un- able to complete its work: a chapter of spe- cial rules for the cataloging of computer records. It is hoped that attention will be given to the work of Ray Wall and to the proposals of the ALA Subcommittee on Ma- chine Readable Records in any continuing work which the Media Cataloging Rules Committee undertakes. While this publication is still a draft, it is one of the most carefully constructed sets of standards for the cataloging of non-book materials available, with input from the Li- brary Association, the American Library As- sociation, Jean Riddle Weihs and her col- leagues from the Canadian Library Asso- ciation, and the NCET. As such it merits careful attention by all librarians and me- dia specialists.-Nancy L. Eaton, General Libraries, The University of Texas at Aus- tin. Organization and Staffing of the Libraries of Columbia University. Prepared by Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc. Westport, Conn.: Red grave Information Resources, 1973. There seems to be a distinct inability to realize that the miasmi'c swale from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. be- comes more disconnected from the United States as time goes on, more fictitious, more divorced from reality. Viz., when the Asso- ciation of Research Libraries (housed in Nixon Bay) chose to sponsor a study "to provide guidance for the improvement of other university libraries," presumably its eighty-odd members, it had it funded in the Columbia University Library, the least typical library, in the least typical univer- sity, in the least typical city in the country. The typical ARL library is non-major, non- private, non-Ivy League, non-Eastern, and non-urban. The typical library disease is malnutrition, not gout. So this study was fatally Hawed from the beginning. It describes the Columbia University li- braries and their present organization, analyzes their central problem in the uni- versity, and proposes a reorganization and staffing pattern to meet the problem. It con- cludes with a plan for implementing the re- organization. The description of Columbia's libraries informs us early (on pages 14-15) that the university has 16,000 students, 4,100 facul- ty, and 7,300 staff. "Begobl" says I, "and no wonder it is that Columbia goes broke, with one employee for each 1.5 students!" Other sources inform us that BAH left out 7,000 part-time students and neglected to mention that only 1,600 of the faculty are full-time. We are once again in the won- drous presence of the mechanical tongs of the Management Consultant Experts, who manipulate facts seen through a glass dark- ly and even more dimly understood. We suffered through a plethora of them on Long Island in the sixties; Westat has just hung another turkey around ARL' s neck. WHEN will we give up these astringent studies, totally devoid of any sensitive knowledge of the dynamics of libraries (no matter how high-priced they are) that pa- rade under the rubric of "management"? With our confidence in the statistics al- ready shattered on page 15, we proceed through a thoroughly Army-type platitudi- nous instructional program about the Colum- bia libraries that feeds us a dreary, unin- structive recitation of its objectives and twelve graphs, maps, charts, and pie-graphs in ten pages of the worst tradition of use- less graphics. We are then liberated from an exposition that could be intelligently presented in two pages, and launched into the Recommended Plan of Organization. Here, obviously, BAH should be at home. But if they are, it doesn't pay to visit • them. The problem BAH see as a multipli- cation of specialties in the university re- quiring ever more sophisticated help in the libraries. Historically, Columbia has re- sponded to this development by devising a system of thirty-five specialized libraries operating as self-contained units. BAH see the professional librarians in these units di- verted by administrative and operational concerns at the expense of their develop- ment of specialized instructional, reference, and research skills. Their proposed reorga- nization is intended to redress this condi- tion by freeing the specialists from their ad- ministration-oriented prisons. U nfortimate- ly, this study does not solve the problem. BAH do not consider the limitations in- herent in the small number of specialists on the Columbia staff vis-a-vis the wide range of specialties in the university, nor the ad- vantages of specialist-administrators, nor the enormous advantage of having the spe- cialists on the line in the building with the subject-oriented faculty and students. They rather propose to solve the problem by re- deploying and redefining the staff, with no great increase in numbers required. At this point in the book we look forward to a Loaves and Fishes act, producing help for the Old Church Slavonicists by resurrecting that journalism librarian from his daily op- erational tomb. BAH never heard of Occam's Razor; and their proposal for reorganization, which bristles with useless, unnecessary complex- ities, needs a good clean shave, after which we would find ourselves in approximately the kinds of solutions used elsewhere to solve the specialist problem. First of all, it leaves untouched in thei'r self-containment the libraries for law, medicine, archives, rare books, architecture, and East Asian studies. Why it is not necessary to liberate professionals to develop specialty skills for law, medi'cine, and architecture, three of the most radically changing disciplines in the entire span of knowledge, is not dis- cussed. The rest of the libraries would be inter- related in an organization bifurcated into service and resource groups, backed up by a processing and business support group. Services are to be first line, second line, and third line (increasing in depth of sophisti'- Recent Publications I 301 cation with the numbers). How to make the user feel happy as he is battered about in this three-cornered ping-pong is not made clear, and where to locate the lines geographically in an extensive library sys- tem is not considered. There would be three service centers for humanities, social sciences, and sciences, each with a primary center and with allied libraries, and each with an access department and an instruc- tional materials and services department. The allied libraries remain small, special- ized collections, each with a full range of services with minimal staff (what the re- port considers bad in its beginning). The senior librarians still perform multiple func- tions, but now with split reporting lines-to service and resource groups. Nothing here promises to free professional librarians to develop their subject specialties for the greater glory of Columbia. The resource group contains high-pow- ered subject specialists for third-line refer- ence in depth, book and binding selection, original cataloging, faculty and curriculum coordination, and current: awareness activ- ities-quite a tutti-frutti of very diverse skills. It is divided into two divisions, for resource development and utilization and for bibliographical control, each with units for humanities, social sciences, and sciences. There would be a cross-over here of special- ists from the service group centers. Where in the melange the user goes to dig out his specialist in Coptic village social problems is not made clear. Indeed, the entire study shows ignorance of the critical importance of the strategic location of human resources in relation to user movements in library sys- tems. We finish off the organization with a support group that contains records and processing and business services depart- ments that do what their titles suggest. All of this has the true academic stink that suggests an undergraduate assignment in a field scarcely known, that has to dig up a .. new" answer to show its nonexistent authority. The scheme does not even have the virtue of high imagination, rather being weighed down by the leaden shoes of the management consultant mentality. Nothing in the reorganization promises to free the specialist librarian from his or- ganizational chains. This can be done only 302 I College & Research Libraries • July 1974 by multiplying staff members with ad- vanced subject knowledge and springing them loose from daily duties into greater contact with the faculty and into continu- ing staff development programs, all of which takes time and money. There is no cut-rate soluti'on via organization to the de- velopment of additional subject specializa- tion on library staffs. So, in addition to being conducted in the wrong library this study does not produce much of use to Columbia or anyone else. It does contain lots of charts and diagrams and lots of very detailed schedules, and two ideas that Columbia has used-that there be a planning department (long talked about in libraries but seldom tried) , and that the university librarian be elevated to vice-president, a post that Jim Haas as- sumed shortly after the study. Good head, that lad! Although he was responsible for instigating this study, he has not let it in- fect his library system to any great degree. -Ellsworth Mason, University of Colorado, Boulder. Harrison, Helen P. Film Library Tech- niques (Studies in Media Management [New York: Hastings House, 1973]). 277p. $16.50. Helen P. Harrison, media librarian at the Open University and a Fellow of the Brit- ish Library Association, has produced an exhaustive combination state-of-the-art sur- vey and practical technical manual dealing with film libraries. The material covered is extensive and well organized. Information on the function and purpose of film librari'es, their history and organization, and future developments is supported by highly detailed and prac- tical technical applications presented in a scholarly and informed manner. Cataloging and information retri'eval are discussed in depth, as are matters of copy- right and economics. The section on admin- istration and planning contains prescriptive guidelines which are flexible, and which can be generalized to apply to functions and conditions in varying situations. Film is a medium which poses a signifi- cant number of problems to the archivist, handler, and organizer. Storage and preser- vation, requirements for intermediary de- vices and utilization, copyright, and of course, cataloging procedures are examples of aspects which relate to library proce- dures, but which require specialized tech- niques for implementation. Development and applications of tech- niques are further complicated by the di- versity in film libraries. These can be iden- tified as di'stribution, documentary produc- tion, feature production, government, gov- ernment research, national archives, news- reel, and television, as well as the educa- tional film libraries. Aims, policy, and con- tents will vary among these libraries, af- fecting their procedures. Considerable attention is devoted to cata- loging and classification, particularly shot listing. A shot list is a record of the con- tents of the film, with the amount of de- tail determined by the type and function of the film library. Essential features to be recorded include title, credits, footage, type of shot, description of shot, and sound (commentary, speech, or natural sound ef- fects) . N ewsfilm and stockshots require de- tailed analysis in order to permit access to one short sequence among many hundreds of thousands of pieces. The analysis can ex- tend to notes on placement of the camera, its angle and movement, and the distance of the subject from the camera. For the li- brarian trained in handling analytics for print cataloging, this process may seem pro- hibitive in terms of time and cost, yet it is an essential procedure in working with film other than feature or educational films. Harrison's comparison of the cataloging codes of practice for use in film libraries is based on her intimate knowledge of oper- ational techniques. While she is highly sup- portive of the requirement for international standards, she has good reason to express doubt that rules being formulated for gen- eral libraries and resource centers will be entirely adaptable to the needs of special- i'zed institutions and single-medium collec- tions. Special libraries serve their clientele in an individualized manner, and film li- braries have intrinsic requirements peculiar to their function. A brief review can merely reference the extensive information contained in this