College and Research Libraries 162 I College & Research Libraries • March 1977 complete. It is interesting to note that there were over eighty-four relocations and over 100 insertions or enlargements in the sec- ond edition. Comaromi comments that "li- brarians must have been stupefied by the extent of change in subject location." Dewey promised this would be a one-shot rearrangement, and librarians did what li- brarians have done ever since-accommo- dated to the new order. But not without some clamor. The chief opponents' views are described in an amus- ing chapter. A third edition came along three years later, perhaps to reassure critics that the . second was only provisional after all, (Dewey was a hard person to put down. Besides promoting his system and training people to use it, he also bought the pub- lishing company when the publisher went broke just as the third edition was about to appear.) Edition followed edition, and Comaromi, working with primary sources, manages to make the publishing history of each much more lively than might be ex- pected. Serious criticism from Rider, Bliss, Sayers, and others began with the seventh edition in 1911 and mostly concerned the need for major revision to keep up with the advance of knowledge, an unsolved prob- lem that continues to plague classification and indexing systems to this day. It is interesting to note that Dewey had introduced into the seventh edition no less than ten of the auxiliary symbols which are now claimed to be one of the chief advan- tages of the Universal Decimal Classifica~ tion system. The chapter on the relations between DDC and the Classification Deci- male (forerunner of UDC) is one of the most entertaining in the book. Among other things, it contain~ correspondence between Dewey and the editor, Dorcas Fellows, both writing in his simplified, telegraphic style English (thoughtfully translated by Comaromi). The editor, who held that position for al- most two decades, was a strong-minded in- dividual. Godfrey Dewey got exactly nowhere when he tried to persuade her to stop using the classification to advance spelling reform. Similarly, criticisms by Grace Osgood Kelley were ignored because Miss Fellows disliked her and "was at war" with her superior at the Crerar Library. Nevertheless, Dorcas Fellows was one of the best editors the classification had. The history of recent editions (16th- 18th) is covered in the last third of the book. A large number of readers will be fa- miliar with the system, its advisors, officers, and major practitioners, so that this part is virtually current history-well documented. Comaromi is to be congratulated for writing an excellent history and a lively · and entertaining book on a subject not usually considered to be very exciting. We look forward to more work of this caliber from his pen.-Phyllis A. Richmond, School of Library Science, Case Western Reserve University. Wiegand, Dietmar. Professioneller Status und Kontrolle iiber ein ( symbolisches) soziales Oh;ekt am Beispiel des wissen· schaftlichen Bibliothekars: Ein Beitrag zur professionssoziologischen Theorie und Kasuistik. Europaische Hochschulschrif- ten, .Reihe XXII, Soziologie, Bd. 16. Bern: Herbert Lang; Frankfurt/ M. und Miinchen: Peter Lang, 1976. 193p. ISBN 3-261-01937-9. In case the title, which in English means Professional Status and Control over a (Symbolic) Social Object as Illustrated by the Example of the Academic Librarian, does not tip unwary readers off, let them be warned that this book is a doctoral dis- sertation in sociology: Its language is not the King's English or the Kaiser's German but German sociologese. And .if that is not enough to scare readers off, let them be further warned that the author has broken the book down into decimally numbered sections, sub-sections, even sub-sub-sub- sub-sections, giving it the forbidding ap- pearance of a book-length outline or table of contents. The two main parts are of almost equal length. The first is a survey of the sociology of professions. After considering various traits which might distinguish a profession from an occupation, e.g., the existence of a body of theoretical literatUre or of a pro- fessional organization, and finding these traits wanting, Dr. Wiegand comes down on the side of the American sociologist Everett C. Hughes and his students who allow only one criterion: control over a "symbolic social object" exercised through '1icensing" and a "mandate." For a physi- cian, the symbolic social object is health, and in controlling it he is licensed to act in ways others are not. License implies a man- date which enables the physician to tell others how they have to act. · The second part of the book, measuring academic librarianship, primarily German and American, against Hughes's standards, finds that it falls short of full professional status much as does pharmacology. Relying heavily on interviews with students using the library of the U Diversity of Giessen in 1971, as well as on published reports, Wie- gand concludes that students, insofar as they have any understanding of the role of librarians at all, rank them-and their card catalogs-well behind faculty or browsing when selecting books or following a line of inquiry. Only in the library-college does Wiegand see librarians gain control over the elusive symbolic social object, knowl- edge and its transmission. Appendixes list the questions asked in the Giessen interviews and certain charac- teristics of the respondents. The full bibli- ography is, like the text, divided into a sociological and a library part. About half the. citations are American. Wiegand is himself an academic librari- an, but his book .is for sociologists.-Eric von Brockdorff, Director of Libraries, Hart- wick College, Oneonta, New York. Dranov, Paula. Microfilm: the Librarian's View, 1976-77. White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industries Publications, Inc., 1976. 101p. $24.50. LC 76-17481. ISBN 0-914236-05-9. As the title indicates, this book reports librarians' views on microforms and micro- forril use. Information in the book is based on a literature review (of undisclosed com- prehensive'ness), a mail survey of 800 li- braries ( 157 responded), and telephone interviews in which librarians were encour- aged to talk "off the top of their heads" on the advantages and limitations of micro- form use. Knowledge Industries Publica- tions also publishes the newsletter Advanced Technology/ Libraries. The title under review here is interesting, Recent Publications I 163 well-written, but not as impressive as The Electronic Library, a survey of biblio- graphic data bases produced last year by the same publisher. Although approximate- ly one-third of the book is devoted to a de- scription of basic microforms, it could not be considered a micrographics primer. Much of the text in this section is derived from reported news items in Advanced Technology/ Libraries. Roll microforms, mi- crofiche, and ultrafiche are well treated, but aperture cards, used in some patent infor- mation systems, are dismissed briefly as inappropriate for library applications. Mi- crofilm jackets are not even mentioned, de- spite reports of their successful use in special libraries. With the exception of an interesting section on duplicating film stock, microphotographic technology is glossed over. The description of the creation of computer-output-microfilm catalogs from machine-readable data bases (p.l3) is mis- leading by any standard. The actual report of survey and inter- view results occupies only about sixty pages. Results are presented in the text and summarized in tables. The author offers five major conclusions. Three are supported by the survey results but will surprise no one: (I) The amount of material available and acquired in microform has increased steadily, although there has been no trend toward the acquisition of books and jour- nals directly in microform. (2) Microfiche is now challenging 35mm reels as a signifi- cant microform, while ultrafiche has made little headway, and micro-opaques are in disfavor. (3) Reading equipment remains a serious obstacle to widespread microform use. The remaining two conclusions may be correct but are not supported by the survey results. The survey does not indicate, as the author concludes, that questions about the suitability of non-silver microfilms are ham- pering wider use of microforms by libraries. Although the author concludes that the use of microforms for administrative record- keeping, especially catalog maintenance, is a promising area for libraries, only 24 per- cent responded affirmatively to a question concerning the existence of plans to use microform catalogs in the future; 34 per- cent responded negatively; and 42 percent gave no response.-William Saffady, School