College and Research Libraries X tory and concluding ones. Margaret Chis- holm's introductory paper defines media programs in terms of what media people do; she lists ten functions that characterize an optimum media program. W. C. Meier- henry considers "trends and pressures which have molded and shaped institution- al programs in the present and past" (p.47). He finds eleven reasons why great- er use of media in higher education has not occurred but considers the growth of inter- est in individualized instruction (exempli- fied by Sam Postlethwait anq Fred S. Kel- ler) an encouraging sign for the role of media in the future. Charles Vlcek and Da- vid M. Crossman take opposite stands on the thorny question of integrated library/ media programs; Vlcek argues the combina- tion is doomed to fail, while Crossman stoutly defends it. Vlcek's paper is heady stuff, even for the author (who found it de- sirable to describe the position advanced in his paper as overstated for the purpose of argument). Following this, Donald Riecks and John A . . Davis consider central- ized media services versus decentralized media services; Riecks surveys the structure of several large-campus media programs and concludes that centralization is "the most logical method of providing the inter- relation of media support elements while making optimum use of available resources" (p.69), while Davis argues that "control of the media of instruction by any single agency is likely to be inimical to the goal of campus-wide improvement of instruc- tion" (p.82). Gerald R. Brong (the issue editor) contributes two papers, one on in- formation center management and the other on budgeting for media programs. The con- cluding paper, by Amo De Bernardis, ex- horts media personnel to give "dynamic leadership" to the improvement of instruc- tion. The theme of "improving" education is, in fact, a sort of conference keynote; when distinguishing between libraries and media programs, several contributors define libraries as entities that "support" instruc- tion and media programs as entities that "improve" it. The publication has some irritating fea- tures. There are misspellings: the Carnegie Commission is frequently rendered "Car- neigie." There are also some rather odd grammatical constructions in the preface Recent Publications I 565 and introduction: How does a "goal" [sub- ject] "target at" [verb] something? The spiral-bound format is functional and prob- ably economical, but not particularly eye- catching. The material, however, is useful and compactly presented.-Cathleen Flana- gan, Graduate School of Library Science, University af Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Thompson, Anthony Hugh. Censorship in Public Libraries in the United Kingdom during the Twentieth Century. New York: Bowker, 1975. 236p. $15.95. (ISBN 0-85935-0 19-3) A revision of the author's master's thesis, this study purports to be the first thorough analysis of censorship in U.K. public li- braries. It reveals, probably to the surprise of very few, that censorship has been fre- quently imposed on and practiced by those libraries. During the troubled years of World War II, for example, a refusal to purchase potentially troublesome political publications, including the Daily Worker, created a controversy in Southport, as did a ban on the purchase of Huxley's work on saving one's sight, The Art of Seeing. Dur- ing the 1950s the book critic of the West London Observer conducted an editorial campaign against alleged library censorship to win a place on open shelves in West London for Memoirs af Hecate County. In the 1960s the Manchester Libraries Com- mittee decided to purchase Lady Chatter- ley's Lover ("If the father of a 15-year-old girl does not want her to read Lady C., it is his responsibility to stop her . . . borrow- ing it from the library"), whereas the F1eet- wood Library Committee .rejected the book because "it has the morals of a farmyard." As in the U.S., well-publicized contro- versies over library materials in Britain have usually been the product of citizens' complaints (an outraged mother wrote to the Bury Free Press in 1960: "If members of the Town Council's libraries committee are aware of certain types of novels, some of them really disgusting ... "), as well as the public decisions of library committees reluctant to endanger public morals and the support of libraries by local ratepayers. Again, as in the U.S., British librarians have both favored and opposed library cen- sorship. In 1928 Stanley Snaith, then chief assistant in Islington Public Libraries, ar- 566 I College & Research Libraries • November 1976 gued in the Library Assistant: .. If I want a book I am justified in regarding your disap- probation, however reasonable in your own eyes, as irrelevant." But British librarians of opposite persuasion have allowed only married couples to borrow the Kinsey Re- port, and they have repeatedly justified their opposition to .. inferior" children's books with a familiar refrain: .. There is no ban on Enid Blyton, we just do not buy her books." Thompson's book is a testament to the durability of that hearty British species, the writer of letters to the editor, but therein lies its not inconsiderable fault. It consists largely of quotations-from the daily press and library journals-whose mind-numbing repetitiousness makes the reader wish the author had chosen other, more readable means to document his case. The title is misleading; the book skips over the first four decades of the century in a scant ten pages.-Roger L. Funk, Assistant Director, Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association. Lewis, Felice Flanery. Literature, Obscen- ity & Law. Carbondale and Edwards- ville: Southern Illinois Univ. Pr., 1976. 297p. $12.50 . . (LC 75-42094) (ISBN 0- 8093-07 49-9) Academic librarians usually feel them- selves above the continuing battle between the censor and the advocate of intellectual freedom. By definition, they say, the aca- demic library is the place where no censor is either welcome or effective. But, upon consideration, it is easy to identify many ways in which the supposedly seamless web of academic librarianship could be-- and frequently is-breached. Every type of librarian needs to know as much as pos- sible about the past history and likely fu- ture trends of both the publication of and judicial restraints on literary works dealing with sex. It is rather surprising that Dr. Lewis (Dean of Conolly College, The Brooklyn Center, Long Island University) has herein written the very first book to deal with all ... . . works of imaginative literature . . . known to have been the subject of obscen- ity litigation in the United States ... ," as well as related judicial opinions. Despite what the popular belief seems to be, Dean Lewis stresses the well-documented fact that·· ... censors have not discriminated be- tween outstanding cultural contributions and . . . worthless pornography," although judges usually have, especially at the Su- preme Court level. In highly readable fashion Dean Lewis reminds us that a great many of our leading litterateurs-including Whitman, Dreiser, Cabell, Faulkner, Sinclair, Farrell, Cald- well, Hellman, Edmund Wilson, and O'Hara-have faced the censor's censure. The record is not one to make freedom-lov- ing Americans proud, but it is useful to have it available through this volume. Near- ly one-third of the book's text (seventy- eight pages) is devoted to detailed descrip- tions and/ or illustrative quotations from fiction, poetry, and drama involved in American obscenity cases since 1890 (which, the author claims, was the begin- ning of both a sexual revolution in Amer- ican fiction and of the first really substan- tial effort to censor by law and legal action such fiction without regard to literary mer- it). Her book is comprehensive and clear but could have profited from more attention to the efforts of those groups and individuals who led the anticensorship fight-the American Civil Liberties Union (one brief reference) and the American Library As- sociation (unmentioned), for example. There is a great deal included on the ef- forts of the so-called ••antivice" groups. But, as a pioneering and thorough work in a highly significant field for librarians and others devoted to intellectual freedom, it deserves a place on the shelves of every academic librarian and library.-Eli M. Oboler, University Librarian, Idaho State University, Pocatello. Kochen, Manfred, ed. Information for Ac- tion: From Knowledge to Action. (Li- brary and Information Science Series) New York: Academic Pr., 1975. 248p. $12.50. (LC 75-3968) (ISBN 0-12- 417950-9) Among the fifteen papers in this collec- tion there may be hidden a classic little es- say that future information scientists will cite again and again. Unfortunately, such