College and Research Libraries


66 I CoUege & Research Libraries: january 1978 

The coverage for each author was not 
planned to replace a full checklist or bibli-
ography. Such a decision makes good sense 
when one looks at such definitive works as 
Bowden's james Thurber: A Bibliography 
(Ohio State University Press, 1968) that are 
already available for many of the subjects. 
Yet, while the editors do note that "some 
lists are more detailed than others," there 
are a few items that might have been in-
cluded. An extensive list for LeRoi Jones, 
for example, includes the broadside "April 
13" published as Penny Poems #30 in 1959, 
but James Thurber's list begins with Oh 
My, Omar! published in 1921 by the Scarlet 
Mask Club rather than with his first printed 
piece, "The Third Bullet," published in 
Thurber's high school magazine, The 
X-Rays, in May 1913. Certain items, includ-
ing play or movie scripts, offprints from 
journals, and private greetings, have been 
excluded by design. 

While each volume in the series is to be a 
complete alphabet in itself, an index to the set 
is planned for volume four. An overall descrip-

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tion of the physical presentation of this work 
can be done in one word: excellent. 

Biologists, geologists, and chemists have 
had their field guides and handbooks for 
years. With the appearance of First Print-
ings of American Authors, dealers, librari-
ans, students, and collectors are now af-
forded the tool that is as necessary for their 
work as the Handbook of Chemistry and 
Physics is for the scientist. The editors end 
with the traditional bibliographer's lament: 
"all bibliography is work in progress." There 
is no doubt, however, that this work will fill 
a need and stimulate bibliographical activ-
ity. This series belongs on the desk of any 
serious collector and in any library that 
supports such a person.-Scott Bruntjen, 
Head of Public Services, Library, Ship-
pensburg State College, Shippensburg, 
Pennsylvania. 

Libraries and the Life of the Mind in 
America. Addresses Delivered at the 
Centennial Celebration of the American 
Library Association. Chicago: American 
Library Assn., 1977. 130p. $7.50. LC 
77-3288. ISBN 0-8389-0238-3. 
Commemorative volumes, especially 

those devoted to centennials and bicenten-
nials, should generally be approached with 
caution. This volume, alas, is not an excep-
tion. It consists of six addresses, three given 
at the ALA Conference in San Francisco in 
1975, three at Chicago in 1976. In descend-
ing order of value they are reviewed below. 

"Libraries and the Development and Fu-
ture of Tax Support" by R. Kathleen Molz is 
a sound, sensible, and thoroughly re-
searched sketch of this subject. Useful to 
academic libraries is her description of the 
divided search for public funds-academic 
libraries seeking bibliographical control, 
public libraries seeking mass education. Her 
solution is the pursuit of policy research, 
probably leading to a client-centered rather 
than an institution-centered approach. 

Dan M. Lacy's "Libraries and the Free-
dom of Access to Information" is lucid and 
eloquent and gets to the heart of the prob-
lem of access. Those of us who have been in 
academic libraries during the thirty years 
since World War II will find ourselves nod-
ding our heads in agreement with his 
knowledgeable depiction of the enormous 



broadening under the G.l. Bill, the promise 
of the 1960s, and the reversal of the 1970s 
that has forced hasty consideration of "net-
working" rather than the provision of ade-
quately supported libraries. 

Harriet Pilpel is known to most librarians 
as a victorious advocate in suits involving 
censorship and as a trenchant and ·witty 
writer. Her "Libraries and the First 
Amendment," despite acknowledgment of 
ALA's defense of intellectual freedom, deals 
more with threats to the First Amendment 
than with libraries' attempts to repel them. 
Pilpel indirectly expresses misgivings about 
recent Supreme Court decisions in obscen-
ity cases and espouses what she calls "neut-
ral principles," which is her "shorthand way 
of saying that all ideas and depictions should 
be welcome in a free marketplace of 
thought." Her essay is a delight to read. 

The title of John Hope Franklin's lecture, 
"Libraries in a Pluralistic Society," afforded 
the lecturer an arena in which to condemn 
the policies that permitted libraries and li-
brarians to reflect "the darker phases of 
American society" by their unfair treatment 
of ethnic minorities. A rather oratorical 
homily in professorese adjures librarians to 
"do much to create a social order of peace, 
purposefulness, and mutual respect such as 
we have never known before." 

The Librarian of Congress, attending his 
first meeting of the American Library As-
sociation, entitled his address "The Indivisi-
ble Community." This subject is sufficiently 
broad to permit Boorstin to begin by de-
scribing the limbo in which public libraries 
now find themselves as contrasted to their 
vigor a century ago, when they were guided 
by "three founding principles" -self-help, 
autonomy of the individual, and community. 
By a process not fully traced, these princi-
ples have become blurred in an "Age of 
Broadcasting." Television, the chief medium 
of this age, should be used "to make 1V 
viewers into more avid book readers and 
more ·enthusiastic library users." It is doubt-
ful that most TV viewers are now avid 
read~rs and enthusiastic patrons of libraries 
whose degree of avidity and enthusiasm 
may be increased by propaganda on the 
tube. Boorstin's statement that Herbert 
Putnam "began selling library cards" in 
1901 implies that admission was charged to 

Recent Publications I 61 

the library over which he now presides. 
Perhaps Herman Liebaers' "Impact of 

American and European Librarianship upon 
Each Other" makes more sense in its origi-
nal French or Flemish, but in English it is a 
disjointed and spasmodic personal view of 
the politics of IFLA, ALA, FID, and 
UNESCO-far from the survey implied by the 
title. There appears to be no organization to 
the material; the style occasionally drops to 
such phrases as "automaticity of priorities"; it 
abounds in paradoxes that are not paradoxes; 
in short, it is a disappointment. 

The only typographical error I discovered 
is an amusing one. Joseph C. Rowell, librar-
ian of the University of California in 1905, 
in lamenting the inadequate support of 
academic libraries in comparison to the 
riches of public libraries, is quoted from Li-
brary Journal: "Enviously I have been the 
public librarian, with a city's treasury at his 
back, wasting his substance in trumpery 
novels by the thousand." Library journal 
gives the verb correctly as "seen."-Henry 
Miller Madden, University Librarian, 
California State University, Fresno. 

Oboler, Eli M. Ideas and the University Li-
brary: Essays of an Unorthodox Academic 
Librarian. Contributions in Librarianship 
and Information Science, no.20. 
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 
1977. 203p. $14.95. LC 77-1l.r ISBN 
0-8371-9531-4. ISSN 0084-9243. 
Paraphrasing an Oboler dictum, given a 

choice most book reviewers would rather 
review a volume with a central theme than 
a collection of essays and speeches; but 
when will some librarian frankly write in a 
review, "This collection is no work of great 
research but has several exciting pieces of 
miscellanea that your readers will enjoy. I 
have. Buy in quantity!"? 

Those who know Eli Oboler or who have 
watched him on the library scene for more 
than a quarter of a century will appreciate 
his having assembled what he must consider 
the best of his "utterances" in this one vol-
ume. Included are 30 titles under 7 head-
ings plus an exhaustive bibliography con-
taining 152 items, not including numerous 
book reviews and reading lists. 

The flavor of the writing is the flavor of 
the man; and, as he says in the preface, the