College and Research Libraries committees affiliated with the National En- dowment for the Humanities. Their names are included in this directory to assist those planning humanities programs in locating scholars in a particular subject or geograph- ical area." The committees must indeed be assemblies of back scratchers , distributing the presumed honor of being a "humanist" in the most capricious manner. For exam- ple , Arizona State University, the only major institution in the Phoenix area, has 320 faculty members in the humanities de- partments; not one of them is listed among the thirty-seven Arizona scholars. Northern Arizona University , in remote Flagstaff, with a faculty about one-fourth the size of Arizona State University, has ten scholars listed, all in American studies , with em- phasis on the Southwest. Scholars were requested to list "public policy issues" they were willing to discuss. Why the restriction of the scholar to issues of public policy was established is not ad- dressed in the prefatory matter. The result is that such inhumane topics as " Human dignity and the way welfare vs. social insur- ance programs are administered" and "Ef- fective government" dot the pages. Because of the lack of standards in the selection of scholars , the heavy emphasis on the social sciences to the almost complete exclusion of the arts, and the chautauqua- like topics of interest to these scholars , the entire section on scholars in the humanities is next to worthless . One regrets seeing public funds squandered on such an amorphous project as this.-Henry Miller Madd en , California State University , Fresno. Indexers on Indexing: A Selection of Articles Published in The Indexer. Edited by Leonard Montague Harrod for the Society of Indexers. New York: Bowker, 1978. 430p. $21.95. LC 78-56880. ISBN 0-8352-1099-5. In selecting articles to be reprinted from The Indexer, the official journal of the British, American, and Australian societies of indexers , the editor, and former editor of the journal, sought the advice of heads of a number of British and American library schools. The fifty-nine articles selected took into account the suggestions received from Recent Publications I 515 six British and eleven American schools. The articles were not reset but were repro- duced as they originally appeared. The re- production is very good. Except as noted below, the chosen arti- cles ranged in quality from good to excel- lent , with each contributing unique and valuable information to produce a volume representative of all the various problems, concerns, and facets of indexing. As would be expected, the writing varies from popu- lar to scholarly, with bibliographical refer- ences included for the twenty-one articles of the latter type. The subject arrangement of the volume is excellent and presents the articles in a logi- cal and interesting way in seven sections: " I. The History of Indexing"; "II. The Prac- tice of Book Indexing (Principles and Tech- niques, Case Histories, Indexer-Author- Publisher Relations, The Ownership of In- dexes)"; " III. Index Typography"; "IV. In- dexing Periodical and Multi-Volume Publi- cations (Some Principles and Techniques, Periodicals, Encyclopaedias)"; "V. Indexing Scientific and Technical Literature" ; "VI. A Selection of Indexing Systems and Meth- ods" ; and "VII. The Application of Modern Technology to Indexing." The eight articles in this last section, of course, deal with computer applications. To my mind a stronger selection would have resulted from the substitution of al- most any other articles for three articles that add nothing but bulk. "Indexes to Chil- dren's Books Are Essential" takes one and one-half pages to make this very statement, which is included in an article by another author that precedes it. " Subject Bibliog- raphies in Information Work" is primarily about just that, with only a marginal excur- sion into the realm of indexing. The weakest contribution by far is "The Moving Finger," which probably was included because of the promise implied in its subtitle "The Future of Indexing." Unfortunately , after a ram- bling discourse in the manner of Mark Twain's account of Jim Blaine's story about his grandfather's old ram (but much longer and, to the same degree, less amusing) , the reader finds that the only substance was that of the subtitle. Perhaps the beginning sentence of the "Summary of the Discussion on Mr. Gee's Paper" indicates stunned si- 516 I College & Research Libraries • November 1978 lence: "In the discussion which followed, the audience appeared reluctant to take up the big issues which the speaker had raised, nor did they attempt to rival him in prophecy about future developments." Also, it is unfortunate that three articles of a general nature (p.323-44) were in- cluded in section VI rather than in section II (under "Principles and Techniques"). After the substantial four articles that pre- cede them, it is a decided letdown to switch abruptly back to generalities. Considering that one assumes that the original text was both edited and read through by an indexer and likewise with the reprinted text, it was surprising to come across fourteen typographical errors and two author errors. Eight of the typographical er- rors, unfortunately, occur in illustrations, where they cause more confusion than they would within the text. Of course, there is an index! Using the "Criteria Used as Guidelines by the Wheat- ley Medal Selection Committee" (p.29) and checking the first three pages of the index against the text, as well as spot-checking the text against the index, this reader was sur- prised to discover that three of the fifteen criteria were not met: 2. The index must be accurate (ten page reference errors were found in the first three pages); 3. Sig- nificant items in the text must appear in the index (Boolean logic, 384, and INIS, 386, were omitted, as was the additional refer- ence 329 for Ranganathan); 8. The terms must be chosen consistently (the CRG entry on p.418 is inconsistent with the treatment of the SMRE entry and should have been a one-line cross reference-which would have eliminated the two-line entry entirely, since referral would have been made to Classifica- tion Research Group, where the 306, 308 variation of the correct 306-308 page refer- ence already was entered under the appro- priate subheading). Other index errors were discovered. A cross-referenc~ from Cathedrals (p.l9) to Churches seems warranted. The second subheading under Chapter headings should read "sub-divisions as substitute for index entries" instead of "sub-divisions as useful index entries." The subheading "cumulative index, usefulness, 372" under Indexer, The, was not warranted, since it leads to this bit of non-information: "But consider the value of a ten-year cumulative index to the Li- brary Association Record or The Indexer." Finally, it was most annoying to find no subheading "criteria, 2~29" under both In- dex(es) and Indexing when "criteria, need for" was added to each. The criteria cited above were found only through reference to the Wheatley Medal entry where "criteria" is a subheading. Despite the deficiencies noted above, it seems clear that this very handsomely pro- duced and durably bound volume belongs in library school collections and all other collections attempting comprehensive coverage of library science and publishing materials. Its balanced and representative selection of the more important articles on indexing deserves the widest possible audi- ence. In addition to its being of use to in- dexers and would-be indexers, it is to be hoped that many non-indexers (including publishers!), after being exposed to its con- tents, will appreciate the importance-the necessity, even-of good indexes to make information more accessible.-Eldon W. Tamblyn, Portland State University, Port- land, Oregon. ABSTRACTS The following abstracts are based on those prepared by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources, School of Educa- tion, Syracuse University. Documents with an ED number here may be ordered in either microfiche (MF) or paper copy (HC) from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service, P.O. Box 190, Ar- lington, VA 22210. Orders should include ED number, specify format desired, and in- clude payment for document and postage. Further information on ordering docu- ments and on current postage charges may be obtained from a recent issue of Re- sources in Education. Analyzing Reference Desk Statistics: A Case Study. By Stuart J. Glogoff. Pennsylvania State Univ. 1978. 22p. ED 150 979. MF-$0.83; HC-$1.67. Reference statistics were collected and analyzed for a three-year period from fall 1974 to