College and Research Libraries


rage that humanistic study is being laced 
into the straitjacket of technology and is 
going down the tube. Perhaps we should 
listen.-]oe W. Kraus, IUinois State Univer-
sity' N Orrnlll. 

Davis, Charles H., and Rush, James E. 
Guide to Information Science. Westport, 
Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1979. 305p. $25. 
LC 78-75240. ISBN 0-313-20982-0. 
This conservatively Bound black book, 

accented with gold spine lettering contains 
an exciting clear presentation of certain fun-
damental ~ncepts in information science. 

The first six chapters are revised and ex-
panded versions of chapters in these au-
thors' earlier book Information Retrieval 
and Documentation in Chemistry. Some of 
the statistics have been toned down to 
appeal to those in nonscientific disciplines. 
However, this book cannot be construed as 
a first text in the topics it treats-unless it 
is supplemented with appropriate readings, 
many of which are cited in the bibliog-
raphies following each chapter. 

New chapters are included on the"His-
tory and Fundamentals of Computing" and 
"Data Structures and File Organization." 
This latter chapter is the longest of all the 
chapters, giving good treatment at the in-
termediate level or for the advanced begin-
ner in a graduate information science pro-
gram. 

Those possessing Davis and Rush's earlier 
book will want to add this one to their li-
brary. The "History" chapter is interesting 
but does not really add significantly to the 
main content and purpose of this book in 
the sense of infDrmation science principles. 
But, nonetheless, the chapter is valuable as 
a concise history; however, hardly what the 
graduate student in the history of science or 
computing would find informative. Most im-
portant, perhaps for women in information 
science, is the just recognition the authors 
give to Lady Lovelace, "Ada," who was 
Charles Babbage's collaborator and support-
er and for whom one of the latest program-
ming languages (ADA) is named. 

The last chapter would be a particularly 
useful text chapter for a .beginning course in 
information science, where students need to 
have exposure to basic data structures, file 
organization, and principles of computer 

Recent Publications I 365 

programming. In fact, no clearer exposition 
is present in the literature, in this review-
er's opinion, of some of the principles and 
their examples. Queues, stacks, strings, 
tables, and trees should all become clearer 
to the reader here than in many other treat-
ments this reviewer has seen. 

The quality of writing is excellent. Also 
the production quality is high, certainly 
worth the asking price, with only one 
typographical error on page 111. A minor 
misstatement occurs on the top of page 163 
as power consumption of second generation 
computers rather decreased from the first 
generation due to the solid-state devices 
used. 

This reviewer recommends this book for 
use in the teaching of information science 
fundamentals courses, for survey courses in 
library science, and for addition to any li-
brary supporting such curriculum offerings. 
Moreover, it should be a welcome addition 
to the private practitioner's library, and in-
deed a very good candidate for a "Best 
Book" award.-Audrey N. Grosch, Uni-
versity of Minnesota, St. Paul. 

Brown, Eleanor Frances. Cutting Library 
Coats: lncreaaing Productivity and Rail-
ing Revenuea. Metuchen, N.J.: 
Scarecrow, 1979. 264p. $12.50. LC 79-
19448. ISBN 0-8108-1250-9. 
Living and working as we do in a period 

of increasing inflation, our budgets are con-
tinually being eroded. These are indeed 
trying times as we strive to provide the ser-
vices we feel are necessary with dollars that 
purchase less and less. This is especially 
true for those many libraries that are under-
staffed, overworked, and underfunded. The 
timely appearance of Eleanor Frances 
Brown's Cutting Library Costs may very 
well prove useful by giving some helpful 
suggestions and by stimulating our own 
ideas and starting points. 

The book is a listing of one suggestion 
after another, covering the whole spectrum 
of the public library's activities. Many are 
extremely basic, commonsensical kinds of 
ideas. I am sure that there are a number of 
people who would take umbrage at some of 
these very simple suggestions; however, I 
tend to feel, like the author, that there are 
many librarians who would welcome and