College and Research Libraries


274 i/ College & Research Libraries • May 1981 

with ~aximum reliance on in-house, online 
computer processing, gives credibility to 
her astute questions and predictions. 

Do "Information Analysis Centers" lose 
their flavor after eighteen good and bad 
years? The question is thoughtfully and 
thoroughly answered, perhaps once and for 
all, by Carroll and Maskewitz. Librarians 
will profit from the sections on effectiveness 
and evaluation, marketing, and comparisons 
to libraries. . 

Terrant' s "Computers in Publishing" re-
peats his 1975 tour de force, which slants 
toward scientific and technical publishing, 
especially chemistry. Absent is notice of the 
word-processing journal Typeworld (ISSN 
0149-4851) and of the American Newspaper 
Publishers Association's journal, Presstime 
(ISSN 0194-3243). 

The awkward title "The Impacts of Com-
. puter-Mediated Organizational and Inter-
personal Communication" belies a reward- · 
ing overview of a literature that librarians 
should know because of studies on organiza-
tional work life, employment, organizational 
structure, and personal communication. 

In their definitive review of "Computer 
Assisted Legal Research," Larson and Wil-
liams cover the five U.S. systems and pro-
vide insights and conclusions that have par-
allel implications for the database searching 
and user instruction worries of libraries. In 
sharp contrast to the legal literature is the 
review of the fuzzy literature dealing with 
information work in less developed coun-
tries. Keren and Harmon's conclusion: 
things are tough all over. Their considered 
admonition to the UN, UNESCO, and the 
less developed countries seems also to apply 
to the library-information science tension 
that is as old as the ARIST series itself: "the 
danger of increasing the gap . . . is a real 
one" (p.310).-Larry X. Besant, Ohio State 
University Libraries, Columbus. 

"Online Issue." IATUL Proceedings. V.12, 
1980. Edited by Nancy Fjallbrant. Cote-
borg, Sweden: IATUL, Chalmers Uni-
versity of Technology Library, 1980. 97p. 
ISSN 0018-8476. 
The editorial statement of purpose for 

this volume is to summarize the state of 
the art in online library automation systems. 
Eight papers discuss the status of and de-
velopments in the use of various systems: 

three papers are about online bibliographic 
retrieval systems and services, three papers 
describe user education and training in the 
use of these systems, and two papers dis-
cuss computerized periodical control and 
order systems. Six papers are in English, 
one in German, and one in French. 

Of the three papers on bibliographic re-
trieval, the one entitled "Cross Data Base 
Searching," using the SDC Search Service 
ORBIT retrieval system as an example, is 
very outdated in the fast-moving online 
world. It was written by two former SDC 
employees in 1978; considerable advances 
have been made in that system since that 
time. While the data are still accurate, they 
do not represent all that the system offers 
on the subject today . One paper, in Ger-
man, describes the status of German, 
French, and U.S. online retrieval systems 
in the Federal Republic of Germany. The 
third paper is on the European Space Agen-
cy's Information Retrieval Service using the 
RECON retrieval system. It is timely and 
accurate and a good summary of the most 
heavily used European online service. 

The three papers about user education 
and training for bibliographic retrieval sys-
tems describe French developments and 
methods through 1979 (in French), U.S. ex-
perience with Computer-Assisted Instruc-
tion (CAl), and European experience in 
online-user education. All three are 
appropriate to the topic of the volume. The 
final two papers describe the Pekos online 
periodicals control system at the ETH-
Bibliothek in Zurich and the Swets ~ Zeit-
linger subscription service system. 

'The mix of papers is a bit uneven; there 
is no coverage of online cataloging and cir-
culation systems. A better distribution 
would have been to include a paper on each 
of these kinds of systems at the expense of 
two papers on online bibliographic retrieval 
services. Aside from the overemphasis on 
bibliographic retrieval systems and the out-
dated paper on the SDC ORBIT system, 
this volume is acceptable as far as it goes. 
The available journal and review literature 
provides far better coverage of this topic 
than this single volume, which fails as a 
comprehensive overview of online library 
systems.-Ryan E . Hoover, SDC Search 
Service, System Development Corporation, 
Santa Monica, California. 



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