College and Research Libraries brary photocopying and computer software. Volume 1 begins with an excerpt from the Annual Report of the Register of Copyrights for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1958, describing preparations by the Copyright Office for a major revision of the copyright law. It is followed by foundation works, such as William Blaisdell~s "Study No. 2: Size of the Copyright Industries," Allan Latman's "Study No. 14: Fair Use of Copy- righted Material by Libraries"· (all 1960). Other key documents include the Regi~ter of Copyright's 1961 "Report ... on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law" and the long series of congressional hearings, drafts, and reports that followed. This series of documents fills most of the first three volumes. (Volum~ 2 also contains documents from the Williams and Wilkins case.) Volumes 4 and 5 contain documents issued by the National Commission of New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU). Volume 4 includes CONTU- commissioned studies of photocopying and computer uses by Yale Braunstein, Marc Breslow, Bernard M. Fry, Harbridge House, King Research, and Vernon E. Pal- mour. Volume 5 contains the CONTU Final Report. Although this is a useful compilation of congressional and judicial documents, many of which are now out of print, it is marred by many errors that limit its usefulness. The documents were edited to reduce their size, and in. the process of editing some i~forma­ tion sought by scholars and librarians was omitted. The title pages of most documents were edited to remove all but the author and title (or sometimes just the title). The editor also omitted the tables of contents for the documents. Since congressional docu- ments usually do not have indexes, the tables of contents are especially useful as finding tools. The usefulness of the eight congressional reports in volumes 2 and 3 is further reduced by the editor's decision to omit the text of the bills. (Thus, someone tracing the development of Section 108(b), on copying unpublished works, will find the text of the congressional reports, but not the text of the bills.) Although the editor identified those documents that were trun- cated, there is no indication or summary of the omitted portions, nor are the locations Recent Publications I 539 of the omissions identified. Other problems include inappropriate running heads, the absence of full citations at the beginning of each document, several mislabeled documents, and title pages of the set itself that do not identify the volume in hand. The most significant error appears at the end of volume 3. The document identified in the introduction as the Copy- right Revision Act of 1976 is, in fact, Senate Bill 22 (94th Congress, 2d Session). This is a significant document, which should be in- cluded, but it is nQt the copyright law itself. (The reviewer called the error to Henry's attention and he discussed it with the pub- lisher; the publisher will reissue Volume 3 with the correct document in place.) This five-volume work was designed to trace the twenty-one-year development of the federal copyright policy in terms of li- brary photocopying and the application of the federal copyright law to computer soft- ware. Aside from the problems noted above, it serves its stated purpose very well. However, patrons approach the copy- right law from many angles. Those COI)- cerned with copyright protection for sound recordings will be disappointed to discover that the Sound Recording Amendment of 1971 and its related documents are not in- cluded. Those concerned with registration or the mass media will find that key pas- sages (or key documents) on those topics have been omitted since they do not relate to photocopying or computers. This raises questions about the usefulness of the work. Most libraries will be better served by a less expensive one-volume collection of cur- rent copyright documents available from one. of the legal or library publishing houses. Patrons who are interested in the pre-1975 documents may find the desired material in this set or they may have to search for it elsewhere. Because of the limitations of this work and the availability of one-volume collections of current copy- right documents, this expensive set is rec- ommended only for comprehensive copy- right collections.-]erome K. Miller, Uni- versity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Patton, Warren L. An Author's Guide to the Copyright Law. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1980. 192p. $21.95. LC 540 I College & Research Libraries • November 1980 76-16329. ISBN 0-669-00740-4. It was hard to stay awake long enough to read Patton's book, even though it contains only eighty-five pages of text. The rest of its 107 pages are appendixes of the same old thing: how to apply for copyright registra- tion, where to affix a notice of copyright, the text of the · 1976 law, the classroom guidelines, etc. All of this information is readily available elsewhere. The author, a lawyer with much experience in patent and copyright law, has written his book for the nonexpert who needs simple answers to simple questions and little helpful informa- tion. As its title indicates, the book is a guide for authors, not librarians or pub- lishers. Although Patton's knowledge of his sub- ject is very current, e.g., he even mentions the Gnomen, Inc., decision in his preface, his treatment is superficial and his style of writing is facile and pedestrian. He briefly covers all the basics: what copyright is; how to get a copyright for literary works, deriva- tive works, lectures, works made for hire, scholarly journals, etc.; permission and re- fusal of copyright; duration; fair use; infringement; ownership and transfer of copyright; copyright notices; and copyright in foreign countries. But it has all been said before, and more interestingly. Much as we might wish them otherwise, copyright questions aside from the procedural are often complex and require expert guidance. Patton's facile treatment may give authors a false impression. Patton's book, though dull, is not a bad how-to book for a writer totally unfamiliar with copyright or a student who needs to know the basics. For the librarian who wants the most informative recent pub- lishing on the new Copyright Law of 1976, don't bother. The price of $21.95 is too much to pay for eighty-five pages of simplis- tic text. For my money, I'd stick with the excellent informational materials put out by the copyright office and a basic handbook like Don Johnston's Copyright Handbook.- Meredith A. Butler, State University of New York, College at Brockport. The Scientific Journal. Edited by A. J. Meadows. Aslib Reader Series, V.2. Lon- don: Aslib, 1979. 300p. $27 North Amer- ica ($22.50 Aslib members); £9 UK (£7.50 Aslib members); £11.25 overseas (£9.50 Aslib members). ISBN 0-85142-118-0 (hardcover); 0-85142-119-9 (paper). 1979 SSP Proceedings: First Annual Meet- ing, Boston, Mass., June 4-6, 1979. Washington, D.C.: Society for Scholarly Publishing, 1980. 95p. $7.50 SSP members; $10 nonmembers. ISSN 0-196-6146. (Available from: The Society, 2000 Florida Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20009.) These two volumes go very well together. The first is a handy chrestomathy of two dozen essays touching upon all aspects of the scientific journal save for its physical production. There are articles on its history, on the economics of journal publishing, on refereeing, on networks of citations and pat- terns of scientific communication, and on the future of the scientific journal. There is also a brace of useful pieces from the Soviet literature that in many ways shares the communication experience of the West while in some other regards enjoying some uniquenesses unto itself. The entire collec- tion represents a wide search, a careful selection, and a thoughtful articulation of the contents into a meaningful, integral whole. Each of the volume's seven sections is introduced by a headnote prepared by the editor; although brief, these headnotes help to draw the book together and give it cohesion. The second volume is also divided tnto seven sections. The first section concerns scholarly communication in the contempo- rary environment. This is followed by con- siderations of publishing costs, publication alternatives, marketing, and design. The volume concludes with discussions of peer review and of the future of scholarly pub- lishing. This is a remarkably strong sympo- sium, reporting the thoughts and observa- tions of knowledgeable and perceptive peo- ple. If the new Society for Scholarly Pub- lishing can mount equally informative and provocative conclaves in future years, it should enjoy a highly successful life. There are many obvious similarities be- tween these two volumes; in fact, several authors appear in both collections. There are also some dissimilarities that deserve to be noted. The first volume, for example,