College and Research Libraries


462 I College & Research Libraries • September 1980 

The four appendixes, all by the editor 
and all related to library education, consti-
tute thirty-eight pages of unnecessary filler 
in a work whose title suggests its contents 
deal with concepts in library management. 
The title is misleading and, except for a 
couple of the articles which one hopes will 
be reprinted elsewhere, this collection is 
not recommended.-B. Donald Grose, In-
diana University-Purdue University at Fort 
Wayne. 

Thompson, James. An Introduction to Uni-
versity Library Administration. 3d ed. 
London: Clive Bingley; New York: K. G. 
Saur, 1979(?). 160p. $18.75. ISBN 0-
85157-288-X. 
This third edition of a now standard work 

has no imprint date (unseemly for a librar-
ian author!). The issuing date is adjudged to 
be 1979. 

A small volume that is packed with good 
information for a practicing or would-be 
university library administrator, the work is 
a satisfactory, but not extensive, updating of 
the 1974 second edition. Most of the new 
material is compacted at the end or at the 
beginning of the chapters or sections and 
sometimes much too obviously so. 

It is thoroughly British and some sec-
tions, to U.S. readers, will seem to have 
come from another planet, for example, 
". . . the formation of such cooperatives as 
BLAISE and SWALCAP," and frequent 
references to the UGC (University Grants 
Committee), the Parry Report, and the 
Association of University Teachers. Further 
evidence of its intended use as a guide for 
university librarians in the United Kingdom 
is the total absence of any reference to 
OCLC, Inc. 

Thompson writes of the 1908 Anglo-
American catalog code and the 1949 ALA 
cataloging rules, noting that "both of these 
will be displaced by the new Anglo-
American cataloguing rules, first published 
in 1967." This leaves the important and 
controversial AACR 2 unmentioned and 
somewhat in limbo. 

Variances from Thompson's 1974 edition 
as regards computer application to library 
methods are disappointingly few. The addi-
tion of two or three sentences in the section 
on computerized procedures is about the 

extent of it. New cataloging techniques in 
the British university library are described, 
new cqst figures inserted, and a couple of 
paragraphs on detection systems added. 
There is no mention, however, of comput-
erized book charging systems, where pages 
could have been written. 

A section in the chapter on cooperation 
gives a very useful description of the "new" 
British Library and its functions, informa-
tion not included in earlier editions. A 
lengthy paragraph on library cooperative 
projects in England has been added in the 
third edition. 

The book has eight pages of glossy photo-
graphs, six pages of references (dating from 
1940 to 1978), and a scant index. While the 
typesetting is attractive, the lack of trued 
lines detracts from the overall appearance of 
the publication. 

An Introduction to University Library 
Administration, third edition, is recom-
mended for library school libraries, for the 
university library administrator who "reads 
everything," and certainly for British uni-
versity libraries and librarians.-Roscoe 
Rouse, Oklahoma State University, Still-
water. 

"Library Consultants." Ellsworth E. 
Mason, issue editor. Library Trends 
28:339-485 (Winter 1980). $5. ISSN 0024-
2594. (Available from: University of Illi-
nois Press, Urbana, IL 61801.) 
This issue could have been subtitled 

"Nine Papers in Search of a Focus." It was 
a mistake to assume that library consulting, 
because it is a noun, is a unified topic; it's 
not, and the result of trying to force enough 
content to justify a topical approach is a 
mixed success. Perhaps the main problem, 
in terms of reading this issue straight 
through as a book, is that the various au-
thors obviously had quite different audi-
ences in mind as they wrote. Ellsworth 
Mason's contribution concerning building 
consulting, for example, is nearly a diatribe 
aimed at those ignoramuses (library admin-
istrators) who, lacking all sense of aesthetics 
and judgment, build libraries without using 
consultants, while Barbara Markuson's dis-
cussion of consulting in a network environ-
ment may be said to be aimed at the uni-
verse, because it is a topic on which