College and Research Libraries 82 College & Research Libraries January 1983 hancement of existing ones. Strong lead- ership on the part of the president and the academic deans is essential to successful response to decline. Other topics include evaluation of pro- grams and their discontinuance, the nego- tiation of institutional mergers, the effects of program contraction on the faculty, en- rollment management, state funding, state budgets, and retrenchment, and public policy toward private institutions. Higher education expanded in the 1960s to meet society's demand for broader ac- cess to college and university education and training. Formerly a privilege, higher education was transformed into a right and governmental support was generous. As demand and resources shrink, higher education is faced with the need to scale down its size. This book offers advice, so- lutions, and strategies for doing just that. While the size of the total enterprise shrinks, an agenda for growth emerges. The SREB has provided a basic book for faculty, administrators, and government officials to use in making the inevitable choices relating to retrenchment and to expansion.-Beverly P. Lynch, University of Illinois at Chicago. Norman, Adrian R. D. Electronic Document Delivery: The ARTEMIS Concept for Docu- ment Digitalisation and Teletransmission. White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Indus- try Publications, 1982. 226p. $45. LC 81- 20774. ISBN 0-86729-011-0. Electronic document delivery is a sub- ject receiving increasing amounts of atten- tion in the library community in recent years. The existence of large bibliographic databases containing many locations for millions of titles coupled with the growing usage of numerous subject-oriented infor- mation retrieval systems that make users and potential users aware of books and ar- ticles have created an expanding demand for improved delivery of the intellectual content of a work, if not the original for- mat itself. Reference librarians and interli- brary loan librarians know all too well that the bibliographic databases stimulate an expectation in the user, who too often is disappointed because the material located in the wink of a flashing cursor must wend its way through significant obstacles to ar- rive in days or weeks or months instead of in hours or less. Adrian Norman, of the Arthur D. Little Company, an internationally known man- agement consulting firm not unfamiliar with libraries, was a team leader for a proj- ect carried out for the Commission of the European Communities, which has had a guiding hand in the development of EURONET and its first offspring, DIANE (Direct Information Access Network for Europe). The project is called ARTEMIS or "Automatic Retrieval of Text from Eu- rope's Multinational Information Ser- vice." The tendency to draw upon my- thology for acronyms is a pleasant custom, which deserves some attention on this side of the Atlantic. ARTEMIS is a delivery-service concept to supplement DIANE, the information service. It envisions printing out at local terminals pages of scientific and technical documents requested via a large-scale in- terconnected computer system through EURONET. Some documents, principally journal articles, would be loaded directly into the system from previously encoded text coming from publishers. The intent is that capturing the text in machine- readable form as early as the author's transfer of thought to "paper" is a sound economic advantage for all parties. Other documents, some current and some retro- spective, would be scanned using newly available digitalizers that capture data electronically in digital form from hard copy. While some documents would be scanned based on expected demand for them, others would be scanned only when requested. Scanning is much more expensive than receiving and storing text already in machine-readable form. The book, which is costly ($45) for its size and content, is divided into two parts. The first is a long executive summary hit- ting the highlights of the ADL report, which concludes that ARTEMIS is feasi- ble. The second part consists of ten appen- dixes, which delve fairly deep into techni- cal specifications. This is a technical book for the average librarian, but is technically shallow for the systems designer trying to build a better mousetrap. In other words, 'IHEB/NA APPROVAL PLAN: TAILORED TO LIBRARY NEEDS, NOT BOOKSELLER LIMITATIONS. You've probably heard about other new "controlled" or "efficient" ap- proval plans. Actually they're similar to what our staff began with in 1965- approval plans with a limited selec- tion of publishers. The theory? That they can cover roughly 90o/o of the publications of academic interest. But 90% coverage isn't good enough for us. That additionallO% means at least 2,000 scholarly books per year which you miss. In contrast, B/NA provides compre- hensive services to academic and research libraries. You receive all the approval books or announcements appropriate to your collection. Our subject thesau- rus, with over 5,000 descriptors, systematically spans the universe of knowledge. Apply non-subject pa- rameters as well, and tailor B/NA's Approval Plan precisely to your needs-,not to ours. Moreover, no other approval plan gives you B/NA's New Books Status Report. Updated and circulated monthly, it minimizes your uncertain- ties. The NBSR lists on microfiche ·all action taken on new books during the current and preceding year-on order, not published, treated, not appropriate and so on. With the NBSR you get all the information we have on new books as soon as we have it. Call your Regional Sales Manager or nearest distribution center toll free for details on how B/NA's Approval Plan gives you more. BLACKWELL Blackwell North America, Inc. 6o24 S. W. Jean Road, Building G Lake Oswego, Oregon 97034 Telephone (8oo) 547-6426 1001 Fries Mill Road Blackwood, New Jersey 08012 Telephone (800)257 -7341 . ./ The 8/NA Library Profile: Makes your selections based on general subject and specific aspects of it, IUtldemic lf!IJel, type of publisher, and much more. The monthly B/NA New Books Status Report: Gives you instant access on fiche to our actions on all new titles for the current and preceding year. OFFICES IN: OXFORD, ENGLAND; LAKE OSWEGO, OREGON; BLACKWOOD, NEW JERSEY; NOVATO, CALIFORNIA; LONDON, ONTARIO·, CANADA; HOUSTON, TEXAS; BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS; ATLANTA, GEORGIA; MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA; CANBEIUtA, AUSTRALIA AND FREIBURG, WEST GERMANY. 84 College & Research Libraries January 1983 it does not address either set of questions well. It scrupulously avoids tackling the ques- tion of copyright by stating that this was to be omitted by direction of the commis- sion. This issue is, of course, central to any discussion of electronic document deliv- ery. However, there is a fair amount of cost detail, which is stated in terms of Eu- ropean currency units, which allows for recalculation into U.S. dollars. By carrying through their figures, I was able to deter- mine that the ARTEMIS system might be operated for roughly the same cost as to- day's document delivery, but with a sub- stantial reduction in the average delivery time. In summary, the book has its useful points and it does do what the dust-cover blurb says, "It takes us one step closer to the ultimate goal of information on demand." -Donald B. Simpson, Director and Chief Executive Officer, The Center for Re- search Libraries, Chicago, Illinois. Heritage on Microfilnt Rare and out-of-print titles and documents on 35mm silver halide microfilm. • French Books before 1601 • Scandinavian Culture • 18th Century English Literature • Victorian Fiction • Literature of Folklore • Hispanic Culture Send for catalog and title information today. , .. 1~~ 70 Coolidge Hill Road Watertown, MA 02172 (617) 926-5557 11 Popular Culture and Libraries." Wayne A. Wiegand, issue editor. Drexel Library Quarterly, V.16, no.3 (July 1980). Phila- delphia, Pa.: Drexel University, 1980. 99p. $6. ISSN 0012-6160. During the past century there has been a continual increase in the quantity and di- versity of popular culture produced for mass distribution. Every new communica- tions technology has been used for the manufacture and distribution of yet more artifacts designed to distract, amuse, de- light, or otherwise engage the attention of the consumer. People of all ages and from all walks of life-be they rich or poor, young or old-have displayed before them the glittering, glamorous, exciting, seductive possibilities of modern media. There is no indication that this is going to change in the near future. One area of popular culture production may decline (e.g., the current decline in the production · of popular music recordings), but the gap is quickly filled by some new diversion. Do any of these artifacts have any re- deeming features? Do they enhance life or degrade it? Do any of them belong in the library? These are interesting questions, and they are important. But the fact is that the culture of the United States is predom- inantly a popular culture, and this is something that no librarian is ever going to change. For those librarians who re- main unconvinced of this, the work in hand provides cogent arguments for tak- ing popular culture very, very seriously. Throughout, there is a pervasive assump- tion th~t we are dealing with materials and services that are not just important to li- braries, but are central to the function of the library in the modern world. Because of its nature and its role in life, popular culture is, ipso facto, a necessary part of the library's programs. In his introduction, the editor rational- izes the need for the library's involvement with popular culture on the basis of some of his own experiences and on the works of Brenda Dervin and Herbert Cans. The core of the argument is that popular- culture artifacts acquire meaning only within the lives of the people who experi- ence them. The point is this: any evalua- tive criteria that do not take into account