College and Research Libraries Letters Whither Libraries? To the Editor: I read Lancaster's article "Whither Li- braries ? or, Wither Libraries" (C& RL , Sept. 1978) with a sense of marvel mingled with horrid htscination at the possible demise of librari es as we know them around the year 2000. Indeed, he writes Yividl y of the "pa- perless,'" i.e. , electronic communication and storage, system which is unfolding before our eyes and warns us that we ignore thi s phenomenon at our peril. If we do not move with the flow, libraries risk being rel- egated to the dustbin of history. But was it with a sense of relief or despair that I read about something that is , or rather is not, happening in Germany? In the October 29 edition of the Boston Globe there appeared an article about an elec- tronic law enforcement network in German y with 1,300 terminals installed at police sta- tions throughout the country. Huge data bases containing a plethora of information about individual people , their liYes and habits , can be tapped in an instant at the remote terminals , enabling the police to track down terrorists with an efficienc y that , in the words of the reporter , the Gestapo would have em·ied. However , the syst~m so far is a total failure. What the Germans call "Captain Computer" has failed to catch, or even lead the police on the trail of, a single terrorist. Credit for those who have been caught must go to "Lieutenant Luck ," that is, alert citizens recognizing a face in a cafe or on a beach. To my mind, this phenomenon , entirely analogous or not , puts a big dent in the communications utopia Lancaster projects for the information community. Billioris of " bits " in a computer, retrie vable by pro- grams of marvelous intricacy, are no match for the serendipitous faculty of the human brain-ask any researcher how he or she does his or her business. Lancaster may be right, but only up to a point. So long as the COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES process of people helping people gets the job done , libraries will he around.- Edmund G . Hamann, College Librarian, Suffolk Unit;en;ity , Boston , Massachusetts. To the Editor: In his article on the future of print in li- braries , Lancaster deals exdush·el y with scientific material-and material , at that , of a highl y specialized nature . Indeed, one paragraph sums up the situation : "The sci- ence journal ... is more archival than cur- rent ..... , But certainly not all articles in science journals shou ld be buried in computers. The computer can take off much of th e strain by abso rbin g the purely arch ival and leave a place in the journal for the reflec- tive . We ma y then return to the proper function of the journal-selecting for con- sideration that which should he thought about and which may represent an inter- mediate step to final presentation of a thought-out idea-the book. No part of Lancaster's article addresses the original purpose of the journal and the book. In the humanities as well as the sci- ences, the problem is a serious one. For pure rese arch problems the microfilming of theses was a great ad,·ance . If computers can improYe th eir function , they will take much pressure off the publications in the humanities. Thus the enormously expensiYe but invaluable scholarly ed iti ons of our great authors could be put in some form of easily reproducible text, while the selections fi·om the great authors cou ld be published in the traditim)al form. That is an example of what I believe to be the future of publishing and of books and journals , and of their noble re- positories. May I end by objecting slightly to Lan- caster's "hectoring" tone? Librarians are not denser nor more . hide-bound than the rest of the world ; indeed , their history is quite the opposite-and continues to be. That they may be skeptical of ye t another "scien- I 267 268 I College & Research Libraries • May 1979 tific solution" to all the problems is histori- cally justifiable. And the use of economics jargon-" labor intensive" and "p roducti v- ity"-is a little suspect. These great systems have a tendency to be "capital intensive ... Any reading of Business Week will tell us that there is, these days, rather less capital than labor going around. And in a wrestling match, the human brain will still floor any computer.-Gabriel Austin, Wittenborn and Company , Neu; York. Classification and Indexing To the Editor: It is not my normal practice to comment on reviews, but I feel that I must break this rule with regard to the final sentence of Elizab e th Snapp 's otherwise very fair critique of my book Classification and In- dexing Practice (C&RL , Sept. 1978, p.422- 23). Snapp writes: "Moreover, one might suggest that Derek Austin deserves more than a footnote citation as the author of a couple of the 'several descriptions of the [PRECIS] system.' " But my book is an account of classification and indexing practice , not a summary of the major contributions of key figures in index- ing. I was concerned to show how PRECIS is used and the couple of citations are (in my view) the most important of the very many writings by Derek Austin. One might just as well argue that Coates, Bliss , Dew- ey, Ranganathan, and many others deserve more attention than I have given them . Two of my colleagues have suggested that Snapp is trying to form a Derek Austin ad- miration society, and I would be one of the first to join such a society. My main pur- pose in writing this letter is to assure Snapp that I am second to none in my admiration of Austin. She-and your readers-may not know that my interest in PRECIS is such that I have recently completed a survey of indexers' reactions to the system, which in- volved interviewing many practitioners in Britain as well as a few Canadian users. I am hoping to follow it up with a survey of user reactions.-K. G . B. Bakewell , Princi- pal Lecturer, Department of Library and Infonnation Studies , Lit;erpool Polytechnic. Response To the Editor: K. G. B . Bakewell rather consistently identifies by name in the text either th e founder or the individual most responsible for the development of various major sys- tems chosen for inclusion in his Classifica- tion and Indexing Practice. To consider only the names Bakewell mentions in his letter, among various possible examples, textual statements in his book include the follow - ing: " In 1960 E. J. Coates published the most significant book to date on subject cataloguing. Two years later he put some of his ideas into practice when he becam e the first editor of British Technology Index" (p. 152). " Henry Evelyn Bliss spent almost half a century perfecting his Bibliographic Clas- sification" (p.76) . "A true pioneer in th e field , D ewey ... " (p . 13). " In British Li- braries chain indexing remains a popular method of facilitating retrieval via a classified catalogue. Introduced b y Ran- ganathan as an integral part of his Colon Classification and popularized b y BNB be- tween 1950 and 1970 . .... (p.144). It was against this background that I re- garded it as appropriate to mention briefly Bakewell's complete omission, in a work that I had as a whole reviewed favorably , of Derek Austin's name from his textual dis- cussion of PRECIS. I shall not speculate as to why Bakewell regarded it as relevant to mention a work that he had written on in- dexers' reactions to. PRECIS and his pro- jected survey of user reactions in a letter defending his complete omission of Derek Austin's name from his textual discussion of PRECIS. The sentence in my review had the quite modest purpose of suggesting for the con- sideration of the author what seemed an un- fortunate oversight , and one that might be readily remedied in any later edition of a work identified in the preface as intended for the use, among others, of students, no- thing so grand as the establishment of a so- ciety. I do, however , agree with another re- viewer who recently wrote in the pages of this journal (C&RL, Nov. 1977, p .550) that "PRECIS, . .. developed by Derek Austin and his associates at the British National Bibliography, is probably the most impor- tant innovation in indexing since coordinate indexing was developed .. . "; and if the admirers of Derek Austin should ever gather, I would not be embarrassed to as- semble with them.-Elizabeth Snapp , In- structor in Library Science and Assistant to the Dean of the Graduate School, Texas Woman's University, Denton. Slide/Tape vs. Library Tour To the Editor: The Baldwin-Rudolph article entitled "The Comparative Effectiveness of a Slide/ Tape Show and a Library Tour" (C&RL, Jan. 1979, p.31-35) indicates some discrep- ancy between their study and a similar one conducted by Frank F. Kuo . Several things could account for those discrepancies. An ef- fective message can be garbled by a defec- tive use of its medium , and conversely an ineffective message will remain ineffective whatever the medium . I do not know what comparisons might be made between the tape/slide presentations used in the two studies regarding quality and effectiveness. Nor do I know what comparisons might be made between the effectiveness of the tour leaders used in each one. A carefully con- trolled study using a wide sampling, Letters I 269 perhaps in several libraries , giving careful attention to the effective use of the respec- tive media would be very interesting. Whatever accounts for the discrepancies between the Baldwin-Rudolph and the Kuo studies, however, one thing is readily ap- parent. The studies show that the slide/tape presentation is either (a) more effective than a tour or (b) nearly as effective as a tour . This being the case, and with the pressures on staff time being what they are in most li- braries , and with all of us being obligated in these times to realize all possible savings in staff time and/or funds , it would seem that both studies indicate sufficient effectiveness for slide/tape to make it a desirable and vi- able alternative to the library tour. The great advantage of the slide/tape (o r other "automated" presentation) is in fact that it reduces staff loads significantly. If that re- duction can be effected with no greater loss in learning effectiveness than that shown in the Baldwin-Rudolph study, it would appear to be a most desirable course to follow. If, on the other hand , the Kuo study is the more accurate, the argument for adopting some such presentation b ec omes even stronger.-]ohn M. Robson , Director of Li- brary Services, Southwest State Unicersity, Marshall , Minnesota. Want to do more with your library budget, for less? Regardless of your library's size, we can help you put things together. Even in this day of universally restricted budgets, it's possible to combine economy with a wealth of information. Our current Bell & Howell catalog is packed with ideas as well as products, keyed to those twin goals. 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