College and Research Libraries 256 I College and Research Libraries • May 1980 Newspapers On Microfilm Exclusively from Research Publications, Inc. The 'Washington Post The London Times Le Monde THE DAILY AND SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London) THE SCOTSMAN (Edinburgh) EVENING STANDARD (London) AL AKHBAR (Cairo) THE AGE (Melbourne) LLOYD'S LIST JOURNAL DE GENEVE THE STRAITS TIMES and SUNDAY TIMES OF SINGAPORE THE BANGKOK POST For complete information on our newspapers on microfilm write: reseamlicatio;;s, inc. 12 Lunar Drive Woodbridge, CT 06525 erences, and relevant appendixes . One ap- pendix (page 400) does make an attempt to compare information and publishing activi- ties in eaeh country in chart form. The work does not include discussion of scientific and technical information dissemination. Presenting the text thus in a broad and flexible format , Cherns has , for the most part, avoided making generalizations unsub- stantiated in the text. Use of footnotes , however , is somewhat uneven. A reference to the United States , "public and congres- sional printing, because of its position on the fringe of the political area , was the sub- ject of speculation , jobbery and scandal," appears undocumented , while the source of "an examination . .. [that] disclosed serious logistical and control deficienci e s in th e handling of orders" is duly noted. Many of Cherns' conclusions found throughout the text and especially in part III should be furth e r explored by librarians and government policy makers. "The right to know needs to be matched by the desire to inform" and " Useful information may be passive simpl y in the sense that nobod y knows it is there or that there is a deliber- ate decision not to publish it" are among the many thoughtful observations that should give rise to additional study in each country surveyed. This work is recommended for library schools and libraries dealing with foreign _and international documentation and to stu- d e nts of public policy in the field of infor- mation generation and dissemination .-Joan G. Kerschner , Nevada State Library , Car- son City. Hu , Shu Chao. The Development of the Chinese Collection in the library of Con- gress. Westview Replica Edition . Boul- der , Colo.: Westview Pr. , 1979. 259p. $20. LC 79-1741. ISBN 0-89158-552-4. While the amount of literature on Ameri- can library history has been mushrooming in recent years , a monographic study c}.e- voted to the historical development of the largest Chinese-language collection in the West , that at the Library of Congress , did not appear until the completion of this dis- sertation. The history of the Library of Congress' Chinese collection began in 1869 with some 950 books, the result of an exchange pro- gram between the United States and China. Since then the collection has grown steadily; as of 1977 it held a total of approximately 430,000 volumes. S. C. Hu, who is on the faculty at St. Francis College of Pennsylvania, has care- fully examined the social , cultural, and political forces of Sino-American relations that led to the building and development of the collection , as well as the acquisitions policies that have evolved and been im- plemented and the personnel and financial sources involved . Of special interest to bib- liophiles and scholars is the detailed account of the collection's holdings of Chinese local histories, collectanea, and rare books . Based largely upon annual reports and official documents , supplemented with secondary sources and personal interviews, the work provides , in historical perspective, a com- prehensive , well-documented, and interest- ing description of a vernacular-language col- lection at the Library of Congress. The primarily expository, rather than comparative , approach that the author has taken leaves the work open to the criticism of a general lack of critical evaluation of its subject. As mentioned above , the collec- tions of Chinese local histories , collectanea, and rare books are noted as being strong; but it would have been more useful to indi- cate how these holdings compare with those in other libraries . What , for example, are the Library of Congress ' strengths and weaknesses in terms of the holdings of simi- lar material at the Harvard- Yenching Li- brary of Harvard University and the Gest Oriental Library of Princeton University? Hu stresses that " the Chinese collection in the Library of Congress contained 1,622 rare items as of 1942" (page 108). By item he means "title ," not "volume. " Given that the Gest Oriental Library has 24,024 vol- umes of Ming (1368-1644) editions, not in- cluding the pre-Ming publications, what is the significance of this figure for the number of the Chinese rare books the Li- brary of Congress owns? Elsewhere, Hu writes: "Speaking of the Ming imprints, mention should be made of the _great Yung-lo ta-tien, of which the Li- brary has 41 volumes, constituting more than 10% of its extant volumes" (page 111) . Recent Publications I 257 Although the Yung-lo Encyclopedia indeed belongs to the Ming period, it seems inac- curate to refer to this handwritten manu- script as an imprint. In general, this volume should probably be recommended as supplemental reading material for students of world library history and Chinese studies. It surpasses the amount of information formerly found only in scattered articles and is definitely superior in quality and quantity compared with the Japanese counterpart, "A History of the Japanese Collection in the Library of Congress, 1874-1941, " which was published in 1970 (Senda Masso kyoju koki kinen toshokan shiryo ron shu [Tenri, Japan], pages 281-327).-William S. Wong , Univer- sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. International Federation of Film Archives . Cataloging Commission. Film Cataloging. New York: Burt Franklin, 1979. 174p. $17.95. LC 78-2769. ISBN 0-89102-076-4. Both experienced and novice film ar- chivists , as well as film librarians , will wel- come the International Federation of Film Archives' (FIAF) 1979 publication of their valuable manuscript on film cataloging. FIAF' s Cataloging Commission views cataloging as a complex task involving the gathering and arranging of data and the cre- ation of a system or systems around which the entire film archive revolves (page 3) . The guide's seven chapters and extensive appendixes offer a wide variety of methods that have been used successfully by film ar- chives throughout the world to catalog their films . Topics covered span a broad range of subjects including film cataloging problems and their effects on the entire cataloging process, the strengths and weaknesses of cataloging systems and their application to archival operating conditions, the processes of actual cataloging, and determining which records are important enough to keep. Prac- tical recommendations are given for each area. The advisory , rather than prescriptive, method used by the guide enables readers to form their own opinions and adapt ap- propriate methods to their own institutions . In addition, procedures discussed are fol- lowed by examples from at least three FIAF libraries, suggesting the usefulness of each