College and Research Libraries


480 f College & Research Libraries •. September 1976 

tice of arriving at conclusions which, 
though challenging existing schools of 
thought, are supported only by citations to 
the same authors he is disputing. Then 
there are conclusions which are supported 
by no evidence at all, such as Metcalfe's be-
lief that Herbert Putnam's predecessor as 
Librarian of Congress, John Young, was 
more responsible for LC' s existing thought 
patterns on information retrieval than Put-
nam (p.91-92). 

The book has similar shortcomings in 
style and accuracy. All too often the reader 
finds individuals discussed in the text intro-
duced by last name only. On pages 62-63, 
Metcalfe begins the first three sentences of 
one paragraph as follows: "As Comaromi 
said . . · ."; "As Comaromi says . . ."; and 
"Comaromi said .... " Such tense-hopping 
and structural monotony is hardly indica-
tive of scholarly writing. On page 90, Her-
bert Putnam is appointed Librarian of Con-
gress on April 5, 1899; yet on pages 108~9, 
the date curiously jumps to April 5, 1900. 
Perhaps this might be passed off as mere 
oversight, but Metcalfe cites the latter date 
to show how much Young had accom-
plished with LC information retrieval be-
fore Putnam had arrived. Similarly, in Met-
calfe's discussion of Bliss and Ranganathan, 
the reader is informed twice ( p.152 and 
168) of Ranganathan's habit of reading his 
rival's books between ten and midnight to 
put himself to sleep. 

Except for the last three chapters, the 
book is hardly worth the reading effort.-
Wayne A. Wiegand, College of Library Sci-
ence, University of Kentucky. 

Verona, Eva. · Corporate Headings: Their 
Use in Library Catalogues and National 

--'-

Bibliographies. A Comparative and Crit-
ical Study. London: IFLA Committee on 
Cataloguing, 1975. 224p. $18.00. (Avail-
able from Canadian Library Association, 
151 Sparks Street, Ottawa, Ontario 
K1P5E3.) (ISBN 0-903043-05-X) 

As a part of the effort to bring about in-
ternational standardization of the conven-
tions of bibliographic control, the IFLA 
Committee on Cataloguing (now the IFLA 
International Office for UBC) commis-
sioned Dr. Eva Verona to undertake a 
study of the current usage of corporate au-
thorship in various countries. Seventy-three 
(I) codes are compared, many of which 
have appeared after the 1961 International 
Conference on Cataloging Principles. 

Verona has gone beyond the stated ob-
jective in also offering her own views, 
interpretations, and recommendations 
throughout the text. Thus the work covers 
more ground than its title and subtitle in-
dicate. 

A study of this type is bound to become 
rapidly dated. However, the inclusion of 
Verona's comments and analyses of catalog-
ing problems, such as the evaluation of the 
current German code ( RAK), with its in-
teresting approach to personal and corpo-
rate authorship (Vedasser/Urheber), are 
of lasting value and will likely lend perma-
nence to what would have otherwise been 
a "state-of-the-art" presentation of corpo-
rate authorship problems in various catalog-
ing codes. 

The work is recommended to all those 
who are interested in the theoretical aspect 
of cataloging.-Ake I. Koel, Associate Li-
brarian for Technical Services, Yale Univer-
sity Library, New Haven, Connecticut. 

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