College and Research Libraries


588 I College & Research Libraries • November 1981 

sources made Stevens' idea a reality, and he 
gathered a group of ten other librarians who 
met twenty-three times over a two-and-a-
half-year period, 1977 to 1979. This volume 
includes eleven short essays and eight longer 
articles written by the participants of the 
seminar. 

The first section presents the eleven short 
essays (average length 1,500words) prepared 
for and subsequently published in the "On 
Our Minds" section of the ] ournal of Aca-
demic Librarianship. The essays sound the 
academic librarian's traditional litany-
ranging from the poor methods used in select-
ing a library director to the need for aca-
demic librarians to "become active and 
visible members of the community in which 
they work" (p.52). One refreshing piece is 
Elisabeth S. Burns' article on how a nonde-
pository library can still build an adequate 
and useful collection of government docu-
ments. 

The second section includes eight longer 
articles (4,000 to 10,000 words) on a variety 
of subjects: management information sys-
tems in academic libraries, the bibliographic 
instruction course given for academic credit, 
computerized legal search services, informa-
tion resources (other than the library) in an 
academic institution, development of an au-
tomated acquisitions system, participation of 
corporate libraries in cooperative programs, 
peer evaluation for academic librarians, and 
sharing of staff among libraries. Although 
the articles are of uneven quality, one hopes 
indexing and abstracting services will include 
these individuals' articles so that they are not 
lost in this composite volume. 

The volume ends with a bibliography of 
writings from the seminar (principally those 
in this volume), brief biographies of the par-
ticipants, and, finally, the proposal to the 
Council on Library Resources and the six 
progress reports. Although the reports may 
seem just so much padding, they add a criti-
cal note of self-evaluation to the project. 

If, as Stevens hopes, this seminar can serve 
as a model for future endeavors, he could 
have strengthened the present volume with 
more details on the actual workings of the 
seminar: What bibliographies on writing did 
the participants receive? What were the ma-
jor weaknesses in writing encountered? What 
were the strengths? How did seminar mem-

hers change and improve the writing of one 
another? What techniques did they employ 
in their discussions? 

If the seminar were to fulfill its mission, 
one might also suggest that there should have 
been no guaranteed publication of the result-
ing essays and articles either in a journal or in 
this volume. Rather the authors should have 
submitted their contributions to a variety of 
journals and permitted them to benefit from 
regular editorial procedures.-Richard D. 
Johnson, State University of New York, Col-
lege at Oneonta. 

O'Reilly, Robert C. and O'Reilly, Marjorie I. 
Librarians and Labor Relations: Employ-
ment Under Union Contracts. Contribu-
tions in Librarianship and Information 
Science, no.35 Westport Conn.: Green-
wood, 1981. $25. LC 80-1049: ISBN 0-
313-22485-4. 
Predilections should be disposed of post-

haste. The reviewer served for several years 
in the 1970s as an officer of the New York 
Public Library with responsibilities for labor 
relations. In the jargon of labor relations, he 
could be described as management. Looking 
forward to reading and reviewing a scholarly 
survey of labor relations in American li-
braries, or in 'the words of the authors "a com-
bination of economics, politics, history, and 
the current scene of labor relations for librar-
ians" (p.xi), he also wished to round out his 
practical experience with some theory and 
acquire the benefit of someone's reflection 
and study. Perhaps this was too much to ex-
pect. 

Upon reading the preface, the note he had 
written in the margin was "One of the worst 
prefaces I ever remember reading." After 
chapter 1: "One of the worst first chapters I 
ever tried to read." In the first twenty-three 
pages, this reviewer had an urge to write 
"What does this mean?" next to numerous 
paragraphs. Reading on, chapter 2 was the 
point where three letter words (e.g., "bad") 
were written in the margin. By page forty-
one and the completion of two chapters enti-
tled "A Survey of Labor Unions and Librar-
ians" and "Library Services, Revenue, and 
Politics," there was a brief moment when the 
reviewer thought that the main problem was 
the authors' inabilities to present the big pic-
ture, the overview. After all, that's asking a 



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590 I College & Research Libraries • November 1981 

lot. It also kept occurring to the reviewer that 
he might be in a foul mood or suffering 'from 
some inability to read and understand. 
Chapter 3 on "Public Librarians" might have 
been the detail that the authors were good at 
recording. And what fortune! They an-
nounced their intention to concentrate on the 
Chicago Public Library as an early example 
(mid-1950s) and the New York Public Li-
brary as an extended example and a contrast 
to the older Chicago unit. Since the reviewer 
had no first-hand experience with CPL, he 
took what was written as gospel. But then, 
the NYPL example, instead of showing the 
authors' adeptness at case s~udies, confirmed 
his worst fears of ineptitude. Sentences with 
no basis in fact leaped out from the page. 
Example: "At the end of 1974, the adminis-
tration announced the closing of several 
branch libraries, and in only a few months 
over sixty professionals from the Research Li-
braries were also terminated" (p.49). Briefly, 
the truth of the matter is that NYPL threat-
ened to close several very busy branches and 
this "Statue of Liberty closing" bluff was 
called. Those branches ! were· not closed. 
"Over sixty professionals from the Research 

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Libraries" were not terminated "in only a 
few months." In fact, they were never termi-
nated. 

Such gross inaccuracies, in addition to too 
many typographical errors, a piddling two 
and one half page index, and the already 
cited murkiness of meaning are not worth 
twenty-five dollars even in these inflationary 
times. Here's one that all libraries can 
ignore.-Billy R. Wilkinson, University of 
Maryland Baltimore County. 

Bailey, Martha J. Supervisory and Middle 
Managers in Libraries. Metuchen, N.J.: 
Scarecrow, 1981. 218p. $12. LC 80-23049. 
ISBN 0-8108-1400-5. 
The title of this book may lead one to think 

that it is a guide to the latest techniques for 
library supervisors and middle managers. 
Nothing could be further from the truth. This 
is a research-oriented monograph that re-
views the literature on middle mangers in li-
braries through the late seventies. It also in-
cludes the results of questionnaires and 
interviews conducted by the author. Some of 
Bailey's research on academic library admin-
istrators was done under a Council on Li-
brary Resources Fellowship and the report on 
this work has already been available for some 
time. 

After some introductory material that in-
cludes descriptions of the organization of aca-
demic, public, and corporation libraries, 
Bailey has a short chapter on personnel man-
agement that briefly reviews some of the 
areas of concern to library managers: job de-
scriptions, evaluation, staff development, 
collective bargaining, etc. This is followed by 
a longer chapter which summarizes the re-
sponsibilities of supervisory managers at all 
levels of the library organization, discusses 
librarians' attitudes toward supervision, and 
reviews the last thirty years of literature on 
the topic. Bailey then attempts to profile 
middle managers in general and follows this 
with three separate chapters (one each on 
middle managers in academic, public, and 
company libraries.) The chapter on public 
libraries is considerably shorter than those on 
academic and company libraries and few 
comparisons are drawn about the similarities 
or differences among middle managers in the 
three types of libraries. It is also unfortunate 
that the author does not compare library