College and Research Libraries Clemson University, Clemson, South Caroli- na. New, Peter G. Book Production. Outlines of Modern Librarianship. London: Clive Bingley; New York: K. G. Saur, 1979. 152p. $10. ISBN 0-85157-266-9. Peter New's Book Production is one of the volumes in the very useful "Outlines of Modem Librarianship" ·series published by Clive Bingley of London. While the announced purpose of these brief manuals is to serve as introductions to, or even text- books in, a variety of courses of the stan- dard library science curriculum, in practice they appear to be particulary helpful as re- view books for students preparing for major examinations. The present volume is a small octavo of about 150 pages bound in paper-covered boards. The index is serviceable, and the few black-and-white illustrations are ade- quate, though clearly color would have helped to explain full-color halftones. There is no bibliography, but reference is made throughout to a very few essential British texts, particulary Sean Jennett's Making of Books (Faber, 1974). Obviously for Amer- ican instructors, however, the basic text would be Marshall Lee's Bookmaking (Bow- ker, 1979), which was presumably not avail- able to New when he wrote this book. The author, who has a library science background, has taught book production for nineteen years and has written extensively, including Reprography for Librarians (Bingley, 1975) and Education for Librar- ianship (Bingley, 1978), is, to say the least, well qualified for his task. New's interest in pedagogy shows in his thoughtful introductory chapter, "Study and Teaching of Book Production," and in his excellent organization of all subsequent chapters. Indeed the book provides the teacher with a ready-made outline for a unit or course in book production. Four chapters are devoted to the printing of text, an equal number to the printing of illustrations, one each to paper and binding, and a final chap- ter discusses design and typography. The presentation is what might be called "defini- tion-in-context." As each technical term is introduced, it is italicized and its meaning is given in relation to the process being de- Recent Publications I 371 scribed. The technique is effective, and. the format makes the book easy to use as a handbook should be. The index provides an alphabetical approach, though its convenience would be improved if boldface numbers were used to distinguish between definitions an~ simple mentions of the terms. In this sort of ani- mated glossary the difference between En- glish and American usage might be a prob- lem. There are such differences, filmsetting for photocomposition, photo-lithography for offset lithography, and unsewn for peifect binding, but they are few and should cause no serious misunderstandings; in fact, the American term is often given as a synonym. The cost of the book at $10 is more apt to discourage its widespread purchase by stu- dents in this country. Peter New's book is confidently recom- mended for purchase by faculty and stu- dents in library science, journalism, bib- liography, certain technical courses, or wherever a layman's understanding of the technical aspects of book production is sought, and by libraries serving such clien- teles.-Budd L. Gambee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Developing Library Effectiveness for the Next Decade. Proceedings of the Seventh Meeting of IATUL, Leuven, May 16-21, 1977. Edited by Nancy Fjallbrant and Ker- stin McCarthy. Goteborg, Sweden: Inter- national Assn. of Technological University Libraries, Chalmers Univ. of Technology Library, 1978. 235p. ISBN 91-7260-257-0. As one might infer from the title, this book contains a diverse set of original pa- pers on library effectiveness presented at the May 1977 conference of the Internation- al Association of Technological University Libraries at Leuven, Belgium. It consists of nine, long, invited papers, as well as fifteen, shorter, spontaneously presented "communications." The general introduction of the confer- enc.e identified the specific problems facing university libraries that gave impetus to the conference theme: "the ever increasing pro- duction of publications, the never ending growth of student populations, the pressure on us to supply information more quickly, the appearance of more and more sophisti- 372 I College & Research Libraries • july 1980 cated machinery and expensive information devices, the availability of new techniques, new media and new theories . . . at a time when budgets are decreasing, the purchas- ing power is suffering from inflation, and wages are going up" (p. 7). Unfortunately, library practitioners and library school faculty are likely to find few new solutions to these problems in the pa- pers that follow. In fact, most of the issues addressed here have been repeatedly dis- cussed over the past several years in rel- evant journal articles and professional meet- ings. Since the volume is a transcript of a 1977 conference, this should not be surpris- ing. Yet, this volume does not even summa- rize in any coherent fashion the current issues related to library effectiveness. Half of the book is devoted to the nine invited papers, which span the areas of planning, automation, cost-benefit analysis, user studies, instruction in library use, per- sonnel, networking, and the library's place in higher education. Neither these papers nor the shorter essays following are unified by any conceptual underpinnings; rather they represent a "shotgun" approach to the topic of effectiveness, in which the overall conceptual issue of what library effective- ness means is never addressed. This conference reflects the continuing gap between theory and practice in the li- brary field. The practitioners represented here seem quite willing to deal with the pragmatic issues they define as related to "library effectiveness," but they obviously do not see the necessity of working out the theoretical basis on which such issues are based. The result is that effectiveness is dealt with unidimensionally in each article ; out of the nine major papers, three define effec- tiveness as efficiency (Evans, Mittler, De- clercq); two define effectiveness as user satisfaction (Meister, Fjallbrant); two define effectiveness as achieving library objectives (Schofield, Webster); and two define effec- tiveness as cost-effectiveness (Bonus, Hill and Ross). The multidimensionality of the effectiveness construct is not examined, leaving the reader · with the fragmented view offered by this collection of papers. · Aside - from these conceptual problems, readability of these proceedings is hindered by poor editing. One paper (Meister) appears to be a translation, but it is so gar- bled as to be useless. Another paper (Mitt- ler) is written in good English, but its illus- trations are written in German, making them less than useful. All in all, although individual authors make some good points concerning aspects of library effectiveness (particularly Webster and Bonus), the overall treatment of effec- tiveness is rudimentary. At best this confer- ence may encourage more definitive re- search on effectiveness in the future.- Rosemary Ruhig Du Mont, University of Kentucky, Lexington . Boss , Richard W. The Library Manager's Guide to Automation. Professional Librar- ian Series . White Plains, N.Y.: Knowl- edge Industry Publications, 1979. 106p. $24.50 softcover; $29.50 hardcover. LC 79-3057. ISBN 0-914236-38-5 softcover; 0- 914236-33-4 hardcover. On the premise that the decision to auto- mate is one of the most significant decisions in a library manager's career, the guide's stated purpose is "to describe the present state of automation, its value to libraries, fu- ture trends, and the role of the library man- ager in the conversion process." In doing this, no expertise is assumed and the stated emphasis is on the context in which tech- nical decisions are made. The chapter on fundamentals of automa- tion includes a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of turnkey versus in-house development; minicomputer capabilities; and a general, very brief discussion of hard- ware and software basics. The discussion of automation today is largely a discussion of current vend.ors , products, and services , such as BATAB , LIBRIS, OCLC , WLN, etc. In a brief glimpse into the future, the au- thor predicts that more library functions , in- cluding office procedures, will be auto- mated ; files will be built as by-products of other functions and through use of shared facilities like OCLC; and patrons will be using terminals that are "user cordial." He further states that libraries will have an in- creasing array of commercial competitors