College and Research Libraries Recent Publications BOOK REVIEWS Kunoff, Hugo. The Foundations of the Ger- man Academic Library. Chicago: Ameri- can Library Assn., 1982. 220p. $15. LC 82-3879. ISBN 0-8389-0352-5. The Foundations of the Gennan Academic Library is a study of the German university library between about 1740 and 1820 as ex- emplified at Leipzig, Jena, Halle, and- especially-Gottingen. The book is an am- plification of Ku11off' s 1972 Indiana dissertation on the impact of the Enlight- enment on German university libraries. Kunoff finds the origins of the American research university and its research library in the University of Gottingen, which opened in 1737, and in its great founding rector Baron von Miinchhausen and the notable trio of its first three librarians: Gesner, Michaelis, and Heyne. The other fundamental catalysts in this notable in- vention were the creation of the research seminar (the first systematic academic course), given its classic-or neoclassic- form by the great librarians Johann Gesner at Gottingen and Friedrich August Wolf at Halle, and the creation of a regu- . larly published scholarly journal of rigor and quality at Gottingen. Kunoff argues that the planned, shaped, systematic scholarly research collections that charac- terize the greatest U.S. research libraries evolved from the models established by Gesner and Wolf to support the ongoing study and scholarship fostered in these universities. Indeed, Kunoff argues that the profes- sion of academic librarianship itself evolved from the evolution of the practice of collection development and the organi- zation of library materials and readers' services during ·this century. While there is a tendency in the book at hand to view the past through the perceptions, values, and structures of the present, the treat- ment is-especially in the latter chapters- intriguing and spiced with lively anec- dotes. Indeed, every librarian will find much of interest in these pages; any academic li- brarian who feels overwhelmed, under- staffed, and undervalued should read the account of staffing and hours during the early days at Leipzig University Library, or the noxious results of juxtaposing the university library and the medical school operating theater at the University of Halle. Such anecdotes underscore an impor- tant point that can be overlooked in perus- ing Kunoff' s detailed treatment of his sub- ject, that only the operation at Gottingen exceeded the size of a poorly provided community college or departmental li- brary today: for the most part, an eighteenth-century German university li- brary was a tiny, jury-rigged affair run by a single librarian who was often also a pro- fessor and who-almost as often-paid far too little attention to the operation, or the collection, of his charge. The poverty of most eighteenth-century university li- braries has led other scholars, such as Carl Wehmer-who is not mentioned by Kunoff-to claim that the German univer- sity library was a ''creation of the late nineteenth century" (Carl Wehmer, "The Organization and Origins of German Uni- versity Libraries," Library Trends 12:498-99 [Apr. 1964]). The notable excep- tion was Gottingen, whose collection amounted to some 120,000 volumes in 1776. 231 232 College & Research Libraries Witp the exception of Paulsen's German Universities and University Study (1906), the second chapter of J. Periam Danton's clas- sic Book Selection and Collections: A Compari- son of German and American University Li- braries (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1963), p.12-33 (which is not mentioned by Kunoff, but from which his readers would benefit), Kunoff' s topic is not well covered in English. Thus, Kunoff' s close following of the more significant German authori- ties, and of other documents such as uni- versity statutes, regulations, and personal correspondence, allows English readers an often fascinating view of the major Ger- man universities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.-Paul H. Mosher, Stanford University. Fiction, 1876-1983: A Bibliography of United States Editions. New York: Bowker, 1983. 2,328p . $99.50, cloth, 2v. set. LC 83-21376. ISBN 0-8352-1726-4. The idea behind Fiction, 1876-1983 is a highly promising one. Derived from the databases of Books in Print (800,000 titles) May 1984 and American Book Publishing Record (al- most 2 million titles), the 170,000 entries (not titles, as Bowker erroneously claims) of Fiction list-in theory and in the promo- tion, at least-''virtually every fiction title that appeared in the U.S. in the period covered.'' The format is that of a sort of cu- mulative Books in Print for fiction. There is an author index, a title index, a directory of publishers and distributors, and an au- thor classification index, which groups au- thors by nationality and literary period where such information was available. Based upon the questions given in the foreword as examples of the types of que- ries that Fiction is capable of answering, Bowker apparently expects this book to be a kind of one-stop authority for reference questions dealing with the U.S. publica- tion of fiction editions . With Fiction, they say, one can date the first U .S. translation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, identify the first edition of A Farewell to Arms, find the title of John Cheever's last anthology of short stories, and learn the kind of fan- tasy novels published between the wars .