College and Research Libraries 558 I College & Research Libraries • November 1976 any rational discussion of the question. It is absolutely right to measure libraries by performance rather than by size, but per- formance criteria for libraries differ accord- ing to their function. There is no doubt about the tremendous importance and urgency of library restric- tion. This book is a major contribution to librarianship in that it is one of the first to ask questions hitherto thought improper and to suggest unpalatable answers. If its overall quality leaves something to be de- sired, good though individual papers are, the significance of the book is unquestion- able. Its appearance slightly predates a report of the UK University Grants Committee,1 on the need to control library growth be- cause of the shortage of capital for new buildings-a report of which the impact };las yet to be felt. I hope it will be fol- lowed by more systematic analyses, related to different types of library, and above all by reports of carefully monitored practical experience in libraries following some of the principles advocated. Librarianship is after all a practical matter, and a gram of ex- perience is worth a kilogram of theory.- Maurice B. Line, Director General, British Library Lending Division, Boston Spa, England. REFERENCES 1. Pauline A. Scales, ''Citation Analyses as In- dicators of the Use of Serials: A Comparison of Ranked Title Lists Produced by Citation Counting and from lJse Data," Journal of Documentation 32: 17-25 ( March 197 6 ) . 2. Maurice B. Line, "On the Irrelevance of Ci- tation Analyses to Practical Librarianship," Paper presented to EURIM 2 Conference, Amsterdam, March 1976. To be published. 3. John Urquhart. Personal communication. 4. C. A. Bower, "Patterns of Use of the Serial Literature at the BLLD," BLL Review 4: 31-36 (April1976). 5. Maurice B. Line and D. N. Wood, "The Ef- fects of a Large-Scale Photocopying Service on Journal Sales," Journal of Documentation 31:234- 45 (Dec. 1975). 6. Cambridge University, Library Management Research Unit, ''Factors Affecting the Use of Seats in Academic Libraries," Journal of Librarianship 7:262-87 (Oct. 1975). 7. Great Britain, University Grants Committee, Capital Provision for University Libraries: Report of a Working Party (London: HMSO, 1976). The Sourcebook of Library Technology: A Cumulative Edition of Library Technol- ogy Reports, 1965-1975. 1976 ed. Chi- cago: American Library Assn., 1976. 1 v. (loose-leaf) with 30 fiche in pockets. $50.00 (ISBN 0-8389-5469-3) During this year of the U.S. Bicenten- nial, a reader may easily overlook the com- pletion of a single decade of one library publication project, the Library Technology Reports (LTR). Prepared by the ALA, which itself is celebrating a century of notable existence, the LTR is a significant accomplishment and has been fully appre- ciated by any librarian in need of advice in selecting library equipment. Throughout its ten years of existence, the LTR has offered a number of objective and clearly presented reports and evaluations on many library products, systems, and ser- vices. As its editors point out, the financing of all the publication's operations has been exclusively from its subscriptions, making the LTR independent of any commercial influence. Simultaneously, close coopera- tion with competent, national laboratories has produced reports with very high tech- nical standards, thus quickly turning the LTR into the librarian's version of the Con- sumer Reports. As to format, the original loose-leaf re- ports soon evolved into a bulky, eleven- volume set, creating some problems . for maintenance and use. Beginning with the 1976 volume, the overall format of the pub- lication has changed. Now, the reports (LTR) are being published bimonthly in a noncumulative book format and are sup- plemented by an annually edited compila- tion, called The Sourcebook of Library Technology (SLT), published in part on microfiche. The first issue of the new LTR is a 132- page, softbound book, offering as its major feature a comprehensive evaluation of the OCLC system. The first SLT, issued at the same time, is an edited compilation of sur- veys and reports published in the LTR be- tween 1965 and 1975. The printed Source- book is issued in a three-ring, loose-leaf binder and contains a title page, subscrip- tion information, an introduction, an in- struction "how to use the Sourcebook," a table of contents, and an eleven-page in- dex. The thirty microfiche are stored in re- inforced fiche pockets in this SLT. The filming quality of the text is excel- lent with the exception of one or two frames found in the reviewer's copy. At the normal 24x level of reduction, the print, tables, and diagrams are very legible and are arranged in an easy-to-follow, standard sequence of rows and columns. For quick retrieval, the title of each fiche is printed in large-size characters at its heading. The table of contents also provides the actual location on the fiche for each group of en- trie,s. As indicated in the introduction, SLT ex- cludes "Abstracts," "Library Technology News," and "New Products" sections of the original LTR. The Sourcebook 'has com- bined or revised some introductory reports, omitting the products, services, and systems no longer available. The names and ad- dresses of the manufacturers and distribu- tors, as well as the model numbers of the products listed in the SLT, have been up- dated whenever possible. Prices, however, have been left as originally printed. Hence, some caution is needed in the use of these data. Table 1 summarizes the extent and re- cency of the evaluations contained in the current SLT edition. The 420 entries in this edition of the SLT consist of some introductory comments (close to 9 percent of all entries), reports on individual products (86 percent of all reports), and a "Questions and Answers" section (the remaining 5 percent of the en- tries). Over one-third of all evaluations in the SLT are on the subject of "Furniture and Shelving." Chairs are the most thor- oughly reviewed individual item, not only in this section (52 percent of the "Furni- ture and Shelving" section's entries), but also in the entire compilation (19 percent of all products reviewed). Desks and filing cabinets were each the topics of roughly 13 percent of all reports in this section, with shelving, book trucks, microform cabinets, and study carrels com- pleting the · items of evaluation of furniture and shelving. "Miscellaneous equipment and supplies" is the second largest section (27.6 percent of all reports), with 57 per- cent of its reports dealing with typewriters and their auxiliary equipment and 35 per- Recent Publications I 559 560 I College & Research Libraries • November 1976 cent dealing with photocopying equipment. The most frequently evaluated items in the remammg sections are: (1) microform readers (72 percent of the reports in the "Microform and Equipment" section), (2) projectors (53 percent of all AV reviews), and (3) catalog card duplicators (50 per- cent of all reports in the "Catalog" sec- tion). Twenty percent of all evaluations were published in 1973; while the last four years (1972-75) contained 71 percent of all re- ports. The oldest, 1965 reviews all dis- cussed items in the "Catalog" section (i.e., one-third of all reports in that section are ten years old) . An interesting comment on the changing technical, and perhaps to some extent also social, milieu can be suggested by the kind of products reviewed for the first time in the last three years. In 1975, catalog cards and microfilm stock; in 197 4, book theft de- tection systems, study carrels, and lighting standards; and in 1973, graffiti removers, book trucks, and microfilm rejuvenation were the items introduced in the LTR eval- uations. The scope of the evaluations indicated in Table 1 is impressive. Yet, one may wish to learn more about the criteria used in the selection of products for review. The orig- inal LTR, for example, provided headings but no reviews for adhesives and floor cov- ering; consequently, neither of these topics is listed or discussed in the current SLT. Are the omissions dictated by the lack of interest in the products, the difficulty of testing them, or simply by different prior- ities? The actual use of the microfiche in the SLT is much less burdensome than some proponents of a book format might antici- pate. The ease of consulting the Source- book can perhaps be made even more effi- cient if the editors would consider some minor modifications in the future editions of this publication. Perhaps the most impor- tant is a need to indicate which of the re- views have been updated, or even removed in the microfiche edition of the reports. The present cumulation lacks such information. A more elaborate printed table of con- tents might considerably speed up access to the information located on the micro- fiche. Such an enlarged outline could 1ist individual products, together with dates of their evaluations. The printed index does not include the titles of reports or the names of the compa- nies evaluating the products. Thus, for ex- ample, neither the title of the report, "Swivel Arm Chairs," nor its author, Buyers Laboratory, Inc., is included in the index; although all models are listed by brands tested under the group heading, "Chairs, Swivel Arm." A similar list of all items dis- cussed in each section, filmed at the begin- ning of each unit, would be appreciated by some users. At .present, a searcher looking for an evaluation of the Graflex SM-1000 model, for instance, must scan the whole row A of the fiche, before locating that re- port in row B2-4. By the way, a less experi- enced searcher might have difficulties locat- ing this' material, if he does not know that the item is indexed under "Projectors, Film- strip/ Slide." The product is not listed in the index under its own name. Obviously, the index is well designed for the user, searching under the type of equip- ment or service; it is more difficult to use by one who wants a quick access to the data on a specific product. The arrangement of various reports with- in more or less arbitrary headings is at times confusing. Thus, the section on stan- dards is limited exclusively to lighting stan- dards, while binding standards are re- ferred to in the binding unit of the "Equip- ment and Supplies, Miscellaneous" section, and also in the "Questions and Answers" section. The section on "Microform and Equipment" does not include reviews of mi- croform storage cabinets; they are listed in- stead as "cabinets" in the section "Furni- ture and Shelving." Most of the information contained in the "Questions and Answers" section would probably be more useful if arranged under specific headings, such as review of differ- ent vacuum cleaners under "Equipment and Supplies, Miscellaneous," or a discus- sion of manual circulation systems in the section "Circulation Systems." The editors partly responded to this problem by listing the content of the section in the index, but under "Questions and Answers." And finally two very minor issues: (1) · the printed indexes will undoubtedly be used very heavily; hence a reinforcement t + of the holes in those indexes might prevent premature retirement, and (2) an added statement indicating the "End of Study" would be of value, especially when the last page of such a study is filmed on the last frame of a given fiche. All in all, the LTR and its Sourcebook . are outstanding contributions to library technical literature and excellent candidates for the ALA's centennial best-seller. For larger libraries, requiring reliable and most recent information about library equipment, supplies, and services, the bimonthly LTR is almost indispensable, in spite of its $100 subscription tag. The annual cumulation of the SLT, at half this price, is the second best solution. Most probably, the purchase of the Sourcebook in addition to the LTR subscription, will depend to a large degree on the extent and thoroughness of its edi- torial updates. The critical consideration about any good service is hot the fact that it costs, but the conviction that it pays. The LTR series is now accessible to practically all library budgets-paying many times over the ini- tial cost of its subscription.-Joseph Z. Ni- tecki, Temple University Libraries. Annual Review of Information Science and ·Technology. Volume 10, 1975. Carlos A. Cuadra, Editor. Ann W. Luke, Associate Editor. Washington, D.C.: American So- ciety of Information Science, 1975. 476p. $27.50. (LC 66-25096) (ISBN 0-87715- 210-1) Writing a review of the eleven separate articles contained in this volume has proved a very difficult assigrtment. On the one hand, the pretensions of the field are very high. One is impressed by the thorough- ness of the work the individual authors have done in assembling and describing 1,505 publications in the field and produc- ing an index that is over fifty pages long. On the other hand, after one has waded through it all, one feels having heard con- siderable fancy but essentially empty talk. It is too bad that the Annual Review has not seen fit to update its coverage of one of the real advances in information science and computer technology; namely, data base management systems (last covered in Recent Publications I 561 volume 7). Its coverage of other impmtant advances, such as data storage devices, data input devices, and data output devices is very scattered. Instead, in this volume we are given an entire review devoted to mini- computers. Unfortunately, the discussion of these machines is hopelessly naive; and the examples given represent more the dreams of some computer salesman than a review of "information science." The review entitled "Library Automa- tion" suffers from the opposite problem; namely, it lists item after item with little or no comment as to the significance or mean- ing of each. The review by Peter B. Schip- ma, "Generation and Uses of Machine- Readable Data Bases," is, by contrast, ex- cellent. He discusses standardization, soft- ware, organizational relationships to data bases, etc., all from a knowledgable well- thought-out point of view. A recurrent theme in his article is the cost effectiveness of such systems, and he emphasizes that this subject is "the area of great vacuum in the literature." The article by Seldon W. Terrant, "The Computer and Publishing," is also excellent. The author reviews carefully the actual steps being slowly taken by the industry so that "many of the long promised capabil- ities have materialized." The chapter by Donald A. Dunn, "Communications Tech- nology," is very useful because of its bal- anced and thorough approach. His account of AT&T's attempts to keep prices high and others out of the communication business as well as the description of two new areas in communications (digital data transmis- sion and packet switching) should be read by anyone who is or plans to be part of a computer network. The review by Ben H. Weil on "Copyright Developments" is also quite good at relating the developments of the judicial and legislative process with those of technology. Three separate reviews address the non- technological aspects of information sci- ence, that is, getting all participants in the field together to figure out what they should be doing. One article, "Bibliographic Stan- dards," provides a good account of the or- ganizations that supposedly set standards and how they interrelate. Another review, "National Planning of Information Ser- vices," anticipates a good deal of growth