College and Research Libraries 596 I College & Research Libraries· November 1981 should give young librarians a few interesting insights into their futures. Both these booklets should be in all library science collections.-David Laird, Univer- sity of Arizona, Tucson. Collection Development in Libraries: A Trea- tise. Edited by Robert D. Steuart and George B. Miller, Jr. Foundations in Li- brary and Information Science, V .10 (Part A and Part B). Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980. 2v. 602p. $30 each volume. LC 79-93163. ISBN 0-89232-106-7 Part A; 0-89232-162-8 Part B. As library budgets decline in real dollars and as· both faculty interests and the range of potentially useful material continue to broaden, the art of collection development has come into its own. Any assiduous fool can add, in other words, but it takes real ability to prune skillfully and to realign-and reduce-collecting responsibilities. This col- lection of twenty-four essays is an attempt to instruct the unwashed (i.e., library school students and apprentice librarians) and to ''WE WROTE THE BOOK ON SERVICE'' provide the experienced collection develop- ment officer with some new perspectives. Whether it deserves to be called a treatise or, indeed, reduces an art to a science is another matter. The essays group into five categories: (1) collection management, which includes or- ganization, personnel, budgetary allocation, and other matters; (2) the selection processes themselves, including blanket orders, Latin American and European acquisitions, out- of-print buying, and preservation; (3) the use of quantitative methods such as citation and circulation analysis to guide development; (4) special problems arising from format (mi- croforms, media) or sources (government documents); and (5) "new directions," which includes such diverse subjects as "education for collection development" (Charles B. Os- burn) and "creativity, collection manage- ment, and development." Each essay-one wishes they had been numbered as chapters-contains a useful bibliography. There are two principal difficulties in pro- ducing scientific collection policies. The first AMBASSADOR BOOK SERVICE, INC. ~furnishing books and related services to academic & research libraries" 42 CHASNER STREET • HEMPSTEAD, NY 11550 • (516) 489·4011 is that no one understands very well what happens from the time someone thinks of act- ing to when the results of these labors merge as books, lectures, or papers. The second problem is a more obvious one: even after a scheme for development (a "policy") is con- cocted, the items available for selection must be matched up with it. This is not intended as a justification for ignorance, but simply as a reminder that the most successful results are likely to be obtained by those whose claims to methodological sophistication are modest. What then are the strengths and weak- nesses of the present collection of essays? Those entering collection development who have the background judgment to make an eventual success of it will find the descriptive of this essays collection a helpful orientation to present practice. Experienced collection development officers, on the other hand, will probably get more out of articles on method- ology. The articles on citation analysis in the social and natural sciences and technology by Shirley A. Fitzgibbons and Kris Subranan- yan represent, for example, one approach to dealing with the troublesome problem of journal selection, and William E. McGrath's interesting article (following from his earlier work) has sensible things to say about using circulation analysis in collection develop- ment. Paul H. Mosher provides two excellent essays o:t:t the problems with evaluating large collections and identifying candidates for dis- card, storage, and preservation. The strength of the foregoing articles is that they offer practical ways of determining what is used in and the strengths and weaknesses of the col- lections. The weaknesses of the collection lie in the descriptive (as opposed to the methodological or analytic) articles. In the matter of money allocation, for example, one essay notes: "There are four basic approaches: the historical/political, the planned, the flexible response, and the organizational." The elab- oration of these categories, unfortunately, provides little more in the way of specific guidance than the titles of the categories themselves. Too many of the papers share this lack of concreteness, which could perhaps have been remedied with illustrative exam- ples. In contrast, the useful essays by Carl W. Deal and Erwin Welsch (the latter is always worth reading) set out the problems of Latin Recent Publications I 597 American and European acquisitions and of- fer specific advice (with names, titles, and the rest) on how to solve them. The collection as a whole, then, is a mixed bag, as such things usually are, and reflects many of the ambiguities within collection de- velopment itself. It is hardly exciting stuff, but it has enough merit tp repay its perusal.- John G. Williamson, St. Mary's College of Maryland Library, St. Mary's City, Mary- land. Rowley, J. E. Computersfor Libraries. Out- lines of Modern Librarianship Series. New York and London: K.G. Saur/Clive Bingley, 1980. 159p. $12. ISBN 0-85157- 298-7. (Distributed in U.S. by the Shoe String Press, Inc.) Smith, David. Systems Thinking in Library and lnfonnation Management. New York and London: K.G. Saur/Clive Bingley, 1980. 142p. $16. ISBN 0-85157-333-9. (Distributed in U.S. by The Shoe String Press, Inc.) These two books from the same publisher address entirely different readers. Com- puters for Libraries is intended as a survey course on library computer systems for "non- computer literate" librarians. Systems Thinking in Libraries and Information Man- agement is an attempt to bring the body of knowledge called "systems theory" to bear on library problems. The author claims that this book is not for experts yet it is clearly far from a beginning text for anyone interested in li- brary automation or library management. Computers for Libraries spends a few chapters trying to acquaint the reader with some of the vocabulary of computers and computing. This is an extremely important foundation-laying activity but it falls some- what short of its objective. Partly due to the author's style and organization of the presen- tation and partly to aspects of typography (poorly laid out diagrams, no use of boldface or italics, etc.) it will not always be clear to the novice reader what terms or concepts are being defined and how important they are. Some of the recognized standard texts on li- braries and computing that the author refers to do a better job of laying a solid base of understanding. The second half of the book presents a good survey of the ways that 'computers and