College and Research Libraries Letters To the Editor: David Starn's review of Volume IV of my History of Book Publishing in the United States (C&RL, November 1981) is so grossly unfair, and just plain wrong, that I can't let it go unanswered. In a scant half-dozen paragraphs, Mr. Starn gives us a splendid example of what's wrong with so much scholarly reviewing these days, beginning with that hoariest of non sequiturs, that is, nit-picking a fewer- rors (one of them typographical), and declar- ing that this casts doubt on everything else in the book. Mr. Starn works in a library and he certainly ought to know that every book has errors in it, and the greater the number of facts contained in a volume, or set of vol- umes, the greater the number of errors. There is no way of avoiding them, even with the most meticulous checking, which Chan- dler Grannis and I carried out. A fair- minded reviewer would have understood that. The critical cliche that Mr. Starn in- dulges in here is always witness, always of- fensive, and wrong. Mr. Starn seems to complain that the bulk of the book is made up of histories of individ- ual companies, but what in the world does he imagine the history of book publishing con- sists of? That is the history of publishing, and I have organized these histories in a way that relates the growth and development of the various kinds of publishing. The charge that there has been "little discrimination in [the] choice of facts presented" is without any ba- sis whatever. Mr. Starn is in no position to make any such judgment in the first place, and I assure him that I exercised the greatest discrimina- tion in what was included and what was left out. Mr. Starn says the coverage is uneven; I say he doesn't know what he's talking about. Worst of all, perhaps, is Mr. Starn's as- sumption that this is merely "a collection of raw materials toward a history of book pub- lishing in mid-twentieth-century America." COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES It is nothing of the kind, and no other re- viewer in the scholarly journals has made any such absurd charge. Mr. Starn obviously didn't bother to read the preface, where I discussed my sources thoroughly. The per- sonal knowledge of the industry that Mr. Grannis and I brought to this task, spanning the entire time period covered by this vol- ume, is not even mentioned, although it was a prime resource. Mr. Starn cites as a "glaring omission" the lack of a statistical summary of production and financial data, but in the preface I state clearly that this kind of mate- rial, which does appear in the previous three volumes, was omitted in the present work be- cause these are so easily available elsewhere that to produce them in this work would have been redundant. "The net has not been cast widely enough, many leads have not been pursued, and much should have been culled," says Mr. Starn. Again, absolutely wrong. Every possi- ble lead was pursued, and everything even remotely relevant that could be culled was utilized. Mr. Starn doesn't understand that the prime sources of publishing history in this period are the pages of Publishers Weekly and the Bowker Vertical Files, whose re- sources he is apparently unaware of; and I have used them judiciously and with care throughout. I supplemented these with other second- ary sources, with the tremendous amount of firsthand knowledge of the industry that Mr. Grannis and I share, plus interviews with liv- ing participants in many of the events. For an evaluation of these sources, I refer Mr. Starn, and other interested readers, to the speech I made in January at Columbia Uni- versity, when I accepted the annual award of the American Printing History Association. I won't rehearse it again, but it's just possible Mr. Starn might learn something about the availability of source material in this field. He and one or two other reviewers have im- plied that there is some great vast mine of I 483 484 I College & Research Libraries • November 1982 material out there somewhere that I either overlooked, or ignored. There isn't. Regret- fully, such treasure troves of material simply don't exist, and that situation is also covered in the preface to Vol. IV. This is by no means the end of Mr. Starn's sins of commission and omission. It aston- ished me that so many of them could be packed into a mere six paragraphs. Fortunately, it isn't the old story of the writer thinking he's right and the reviewer wrong. More knowledgeable reviewers in other media have given this labor of love that has occupied fifteen years of my life much more judicious and approving notices, many of them all a writer could ask for. I ask read- ers of College & Research Libraries to use their own good judgment and decide for themselves who's right and who's wrong in this case.-]ohn Tebbel, Southbury, Con- necticut. To the Editor: .I regret that I have outraged Mr. Tebbel with my review of his monumental study of The Great Change. There is a great deal of material of value in the work, and my review attempted to emphasize some of its virtues. I still contend, however, that th~ work does not provide the needed synthesis that this reader sought. It is not a question of right or wrong, but of critical judgment. Of course, users of Mr. Tebbel's work will decide for themselves. As to sins of omission, I could have packed many more into fewer paragraphs.-David H. Starn, The New York Public Library, New York City. To the Editor: Brian Nielsen's proposal of a nebulous third role for reference librarians (C&RL, May 1982), one in which they neither emu- late academic faculty and divide librarian- ship, nor monopolize knowledge, shows his disregard for the different needs of different library users. In my job as an academic reference librar- ian I am both an intermediary and a teacher. My teaching a student who is working on a term paper how to find information, rather than finding it for him, is part of the student's education. It is part of the job I am paid to do. If the chancellor calls me for information to convince the legislature of campus needs, I will not entice him to the library with a promise that I will show him how to go about finding what he wants. I will locate what he has requested and get it to him as quickly as possible. If my search turns up other infor- mation which I think could be useful to him, I will send that too. This service seems to be what Mr. Nielsen calls monopolizing knowl- edge. Such requests from staff and faculty make them dependent on me only in the sense that they depend on me to do my job. I fail to see how an on-line reference sys- tem changes this picture. Even if the student does not actually run the search, part of his education should include an explanation of efficient search strategy and his help in de- veloping the strategy to be used. On the other hand, I would never offer such explanations to the business manager if he called me for fi- nancial statistics unless he requested such ex- planations. I would assume that the informa- tion he wanted is the statistics rather than my search procedure . The needs of the user determine whether I'm an intermediary or a teacher, and I think these considerations are applied by other li- brarians in public, academic, and research libraries. Switching roles is not only neces- sary, it is an integral part of my job. If I were unable to determine when to switch roles, it would be unfortunate for the users, who would get less than they should. It would also be unfortunate for me because I would very probably be fired. Perhaps, if this should happen, I could be consoled by a special li- brarian who was fired because he ignored the intermediary function of his job, or shared information by passing it on to his company's competition.- Valerie Burnie, Public Ser- vices Librarian, University of South Caro- lina, Spartanburg, South Carolina. To the Editor: As to the nebulousness of the third role I propose in my article, I plead guilty; I can only reiterate here that the shaping of that role will require thoughtful action, dialogue among colleagues and users, and the conduct of my research by many librarians in the field. I appreciate the opportunity for dia- logue on a critical point which Ms. Burnie's letter provides. What, really, is "need" in the situations described by Ms. Burnie? One could substi- tute the word "status" for "need," and the is- sue would become clearer. Though it is cer- tainly true that, given the present level of staffing in academic library reference de- partments, a student is better served who serves himself, the attribution of "need" of that student for instruction is something ali- brarian invented. One could just as logically, and incorrectly, state that every student "needs" a personal reference librarian to find, check out, and carry home his books. Ms. Burnie provides adequate rationale for this position, as the most successful student who achieves status on the campus later in life obviously has all such services provided. If the chancellor ever had a library instruc- tion course, it was obviously a waste of time. It is important for us to develop our service goals more carefully. There are situations in which it is far more desirable to give the un- dergraduate student a fact than to tell him how to find it himself; there are also situa- tions in which the administrator or faculty member would be better served by being given training in the use of a tool. As on-line searching protocols become simpler, for in- stance, the business manager would be better served by being given a terminal on which to Letters I 485 do his own searching, and some training, than to have him try to explain to a librarian the nature of his problem. Whatever kind of service is provided, it should be based on a judgment that takes into account the context of the user's problem, not the user's status. Making any user depen- dent on a librarian is a disservice, as the na- ture of relevance and meaning of informa- tion is so subtle, that we must always encour- age the-user to look directly, and not through our eyes. Switching roles between teacher and in- termediary "works" when we serve reac- tively to the demands imposed upon us by others. Switching does not help us develop a proactive work style in which our own tal- ents, knowledge, and values contribute to thoughtful practice. Respect for ourselves and for the mission of our occupation should, I think, direct us to avoid this schizophrenia and to evaluate more carefully where our en- ergies might best be placed.-Brian Nielsen, Head, Reference Department, Northwest- ern University Library, Evanston, Illinois. (POSTSCRIPT:Page 187, line 22 of para- graph two in column one should begin with the word "instruction" rather than "infor- mation.") f~ ~ f A - ·t· L-b -~ ~ cqutst ton 1 rartans . . . . . l! 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