College and Research Libraries


382 I College & Research Libraries • July 1979 

are: (1) cost of fiche equipment is lower, (2) 
fiche equipment has less mechanical prob-
lems, (3) the cost of COM fiche is cheaper 
than COM film, and (4) the library's users 
found fiche easier to use. 

All but three of these articles are revised 
versions of papers published in Microdoc. 
This duplication of publishing seems a bit 
unnecessary. However, the collection of 
these articles in one publication may have 
some advantages to British readership. This 
publication would have been greatly en-
hanced for the American library reader if a 
glossary of abbreviations had been included. 

Even with the limitations cited above and 
the additional one of the brevity of each ar-
ticle, this publication has merit for the 
American librarian. The positive points are: 
( 1) the diversity of applications of COM in 
British libraries, (2) the strong trend in 
Britain to COM fiche and reasons for this 
trend, and (3) the cooperative approach to 
library COM problems.-Helen R. Citron , 
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. 

Morris, John. Managing the Library Fire 
Risk. 2d ed. Berkeley: University of 
California. 1979. 147p. $14. LC 78-22603. 
ISBN 0-9602278-1-4. (Available from: 
Office of Risk Management and Safety, 
469 University Hall, University of 
California, Berkeley, CA 94720.) 
This book may easily become the librar-

ian's best friend by suggesting ways to les-
sen the risk of fire in the library and by 
lightening the director's concern, if disaster 
strikes, about a decision made in a hurry to 
salvage the collection. Recently experienc-
ing the impact of such a burden in directing 
an early Sunday morning rescue operation 
of a water-damaged collection of periodicals, 
I know how soothing it is to be able to 
confirm one's own decision in print. 

Managing the Library Fire Risk is written 
explicitly for library administrators. Its main 
goal is to convince librarians that books do 
burn, that they are very combustive, but 
also that they don't have to be vulnerable to 
fire igniting arson, malfunctioning equip-
ment, or natural causes of damage. Half of 
the book's ten chapters dramatize the im-
mense destructive power of library fires, 
well demonstrated by the Gondring Library 
fire in California that was started by a single 

paper match dropped into a bookdrop, and 
which ended in $200,000 damage (p.100). 

The two introductory chapters of the book 
sketch the extent of fire risk, further 
documented by a historical overview of the 
world's major library fires (chapter IX and 
appendix 6). A case study of Temple Uni-
versity's Law Library fire in 1972 (chapter 
IV) examines in detail the lessons learned. 
A separate chapter on arson (chapter III) 
discusses one of the currently most prevail-
ing causes of library fires. 

The other five chapters of the book deal 
with fire prevention. Fires can be avoided, 
and if started, can be localized. For exam-
ple, 70 percent of all fires in libraries 
equipped with automatic sprinklers are put 
out by .the action of a single sprinkler head, 
minimizing the water damage of the vol-
umes saved (p.29). 

In a seemingly mislabeled chapter, "Al-
ternatives for Protecting the Library Fire 
Risk" (chapter V), Morris reviews available 
fire protection systems, each reducing (not 
protecting) the risk of fires, by improving 
the protection against them. "Disaster Pre-
paredness and Fire Prevention" (chapter VI) 
lists some water emergency and fire preven-
tion guidelines; while the "Automatic Fire 
Protection System" (chapter VIII) discusses 
different types of detection and fire-
extinguishing systems. Additional data are 
also provided by inclusion of manufacturers' 
descriptions of their fire preventive hard-
ware. 

The author's basic optimism is expressed 
in the chapter "Salvage of Wet Books" 
(chapter VII); the optimism is illustrated by 
his reference to a very successful restoration 
of a copy of Merchant's Almanac, recovered 
from a shipwreck sunk more than 100 years 
ago (p.47). The content of the book is 
brought up to date in the last chapter, "Li-
brary Risk Management: Current Topics." 

The publication is richly illustrated with 
most of the same photographs used in both 
the first and the second editions. In fact, 
the present edition does not replace the one 
published in 1975; it merely expands its 
coverage by adding two chapters (chapters 
IX and X) and three appendixes to the prac-
tically unchanged main body of the first edi-
tion. Even the dust jacket of the second, 
bound edition is the same as the cover of 



the first, paperback edition. The bibliogra-
phy is, however, updated by the inclusion 
of approximately fifty new titles. Missing in 
both editions are references to fire preven-
tion economics and to types of fire insur-
ance that may be available to libraries. 

The book is not a vade mecum of fire 
prevention or salvage operations. Rather, it 
is a plea for a paradoxical, yet unavoidable 
strategy facing the librarian: to invest the 
fast depleting budget in an expensive fire 
preventive system and to limit a very essen-
tial free access to book collections, by tight-
ening security measures-all in order to de-
crease a statistically moderate fire risk. This 
paradox parallels the equally paradoxical 
concept of modern fire prevention strategy 
to fight library's deadly enemy, the fire, 
with an equally evil enemy, the fire-
extinguishing water. 

The book should be purchased by every 
library. A second copy could be given to the 
organization's risk manager, who may be as 
impotent in trying to include the coverage 
of library in the institution's fire insurance 
as is the librarian, trying to persuade 
superiors to install a fire prevention system 
in the library before, not after, it burns 
down.-]oseph z. Nitecki, University of 
Wisconsin-Oshkosh. 

Corkill, Cynthia, and Mann, Margaret. In-
formation Needs in the Humanities: Two 
Postal Surveys. CRUS Occasional Paper, 
2. BLR&DD Report Number 5455. 
Sheffield: Centre for Research on User 
Studies, University of Sheffield, 1978. 
135p. $15 (including postage overseas); £6 
(including postage in U.K.) ISBN 
0-906088-01-1. ISSN 0140-3834. (Avail-
able from: Centre for Research on User 
Studies, Univ. of Sheffield, Western 
Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN.) -
This survey of information needs in the 

humanities is part of a wider project under 
way at the Centre for Research on User 
Studies, University of Sheffield, in conjunc-
tion with the British Library Reference Di-
vision. Preliminary investigation at Sheffield 
and a longitudinal study still in progress at 
that university give focus and direction to 
the survey at hand. 

Hypotheses about the humanities scholar 
include: heavy reliance on library materials, 

Recent Publications I 383 

need for access to a large number of titles, 
greater relative importance of older mate-
rials, and the propensity of the humanities 
researcher to work alone. The five areas 
chosen to represent "humanities" are En-
glish, French, history, music, and philoso-
phy. 

Following a pilot survey, separate sets of 
questionnaires were sent to Ph.D. students 
and to academic staff (faculty) in thirty-five 
selected universities in the United King-
dom. There were 612 codable question-
naires returned by the academic staff and 
203 returned by the Ph.D. students, giving 
overall response rates ot 64.4 percent and 
76 percent respectively. Both questionnaires 
dealt with the respondents' academic back-
ground, current research in progress, de-
gree of difficulty experienced in obtaining 
research materials, extent of use of the 
British Library Reference Division, and 
methods of keeping up to date in one's 
field. Replies were analyzed by computer 
and reflected in the sixty-two tables, which 
comprise over half of the work itself (p.62-
135). 

The discussion of the methodology, pro-
cedure, tabulation, and interpretation of the 
responses is highly detailed and informative. 
A frank attempt is made to reveal potential 
flaws and problems in each stage of the 
study. One especially distressing response 
of the Ph.D. students as a group was that 
fewer than half of them had asked their own 
library staff for help or advice in doing their 
research; those who did seek such aid were 
mainly interested in interlibrary loan 
services and not in consulting subject/ 
information specialists for their expertise 
(cf., p.38, 56). 

Comments made in responses of the 
academic staff would sound familiar to their 
counterparts in the United States: neither 
sufficient time nor money for research activ-
ities, necessity to travel extensively in order 
to consult needed materials, delays in re-
ceiving items through interlibrary loan, in-
accessibility of some materials altogether, 
high cost of books and journals, and general 
problems of keeping current. The two 
humanities areas illustrating extremes in the 
responses proved to be history and philoso-
phy, with history researchers making very 
heavy use of libraries other than their own,