College and Research Libraries 520 College & Research Libraries Documents and Information Confer- ence. Ed. by Peter Hernon. Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1983. 153p. $35. LC 82- 14334. ISBN 0-930466-59-4. This volume is based on papers deliv- ered at the second conference held in Arlington, Virginia on March 26 and 27, 1982. In the preface to Collection Develop- ment and Public Access of Government Docu- ments, the volume based on the first con- ference proceedings, Peter Hernon emphasized the underlying theme of a need for research in, and innovative ap- proaches to, documents librarianship and ''more critical evaluation of underlying as- sumptions." This same theme is repeated by Hernon in the preface to the second conference proceedings. The theoretical base of documents librarianship has been ignored and these annual conferences are presented in the hope of stimulating fu- ture research. The first two papers, however, follow the public access theme but are practical in nature. B~rnadine Hoduski in "Political Activism for Documents Librarians'' enu- merates concrete steps to take in influenc- ing publishers and policy makers and gives examples of past successes in in- creasing access to materials. Joseph Capo- nio, now director of National Technical In- formation Service, presents an overview of the agency, what it collects and dissemi- nates, and long range goals of the 1980s. Of particular interest is the section on non- book formats available, i.e., government patents, software, and data files. Nonprint formats are covered in the . next two papers. Kathleen Heim explores government-produced machine-readable statistical data as a component of the social science information system. The first sec- tion, detailing the scope of the social sci- ences and their information needs is long and detailed. The second section is a tighter presentation and covers Federal data file access policies and strategies for developing access. She stresses the need for librarians to facilitate access to this im- portant part of the information system. Charles Seavey gives an overview of government map publications with his- toric background and details of current map output. Bibliographic and political problems of access are highlighted. November 1984 Michael Tate presents a subject access theme with his paper on American Indian discontent with government reports. It is an interesting account of how government reports have adversely impacted the In- dian. He delineates problems connected with official definitions of who is Indian and the effect this has on the census. He also reveals problems with access to Bu- reau of Indian Affairs files that prove frus- trating to researchers. Two papers are research reports. Peter Hernon and Charles McClure present a preliminary report of a pilot study on qual- ity of reference in academic depositories. On the basis of unobtrusive testing in sev- enteen libraries, they found that correct answers were provided only 37 percent of the time. The authors argue that such a low rate of accuracy impairs access to de- pository collections and raises questions about the effectiveness of the depository system in meeting the public's informa- tion needs. The authors make several rec- ommendations for further study. John Richardson looks at the nature of research in government publications by analyzing theses and dissertations com- pleted since 1928. He too recommends further research. The eighth paper is on the struggle to pass a Freedom of Information Act in Can- ada. R. Brian Land gives an account of the many bills introduced and a comparison with the U.S. law. Each paper has references that are con- solidated in a bibliography at the end. A summary of papers is provided by Gary Purcell. The theme of access is followed to a greater or lesser degree in all the contri- butions, except for Richardson's. The topics are interesting, but diverse. The work is for documents librarians who wish to keep abreast of the .literature and for those seeking research topics in the field. It does not serve as a basic text on the topic as does Hernon's and McClure's lat- est publication, Public Access to Government Information (Ablex Publishing, 1984).- Michele Strange, Northwestern University. The Bibliographic Control of Official Pub- lications. Ed. by John E. Pemberton. New York: Pergamon, 1982. 172p. $25. LC 82-12358. ISBN 0-080-27419-6. The Bibliographic Control of Official Publi- cations, edited by John E. Pemberton, is a collection of essays dealing with a variety of systems developed to code and file gov- ernment publications. Pemberton's preface states that this book has been produced with the object of I' stimulating progress towards the estab- lishment of a comprehensive system for the bibliographic control of official publi- cations, and identifying the principles upon which a new and definitive coding scheme could be based.'' In my opinion, this book does nothing to bring about an effective and compre- hensive system of bibliographic control for government publications, but it is ef- fective in setting out the dimensions of the problem and in describing the approaches some librarians have taken to cope with them. This is a book about coping. The prob- lems described by the eleven librarian con- tributors from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, and the United States are familiar to anyone who has administered a sizable collection of publications from more than one government jurisdiction. Government publications are voluminous and comprise an unwieldy mix of substan- tive monographs, periodicals, serials, pamphlets, and mimeographed docu- ments-many of which are issued as sin- gle sheets .. Users require access by prove- nance and by type of document (annual report, legislative bill, treaty, etc.) as well as by personal author, title, subject, and series. Standard cataloging systems don't handle government publications well, AACR2 has made the situation worse, and many libraries have policies against pro- viding full cataloging for them. The docu- ment librarian is left to devise a scheme appropriate for his or her collection and users that is cheap, quickly and easily ap- plied by library technicians, and suffi- ciently flexible and expandable to provide for perpetual changes in government or- ganization structures, publication pat- terns, and areas of interest. This is a virtu- ally impossible task. And, Pemberton is right. What is needed is the development of a comprehensive scheme that can be ap- plied in any situation. A sound theoretical foundation is prerequisite to that, and this Recent Publications 521 book does not provide it. The librarians writing here share their problems, relate their discovery that no available scheme will work for them, and describe the system developed for their particular situation. I, in turn, have looked at the system each of them has developed and have understood both why they were developed and why each of them fails to meet my needs. Regretably, I have found nothing here to reduce my bias against lo- cally devised systems that present prob- lems in authority control and that keep government publications isolated from the bibliographic mainstream in either union card catalog or online format. This book will be of some interest to li- brary school students and to librarians struggling with the issue of bibliographic control for government publications. I am disappointed that it is so thoroughly a col- lection of tales of I 'how I do it in my li- brary'' and that it is so bereft of theory. I'm sure that many libraries have already purchased this book because it was issued as No. 11 in Pergamon's "Guide to Offi- cial Publications" series, but $25.00 is a very hefty price for a slim volume of orlly 172 pages.-Carol Turner, Stanford Univer- sity. Broadus, Robert N. Selecting Materials for Libraries. New York: Wilson, 1981. 2d ed. 479p. $18. LC 81-650. ISBN 0-8242- 0659-2. This work, which first appeared in 1973, has now been published in a second edi- tion, showing considerable rewording of the text, but without expanding on the scope or depth of coverage. It remains a basic text for introductory courses in li- brary science, rather than a thorough working manual for the practicing librar- ian, who would want more substantial de- tails. The focus remains on the small to medium-sized general library. The first one hundred thirty pages give an overview of the principles and basic means and aspects of selection in a concise manner which serves well as an introduc- tion to: the role and nature of selection in different types of libraries; the fundamen- tal principles of selection; the role of use studies and citation analysis; the structure of the publishing industry; how to judge a