College and Research Libraries Recent Publications BOOK REVIEWS Geller, Evelyn. Forbidden Books in Ameri- can Public Libraries, 1876-1939: A Study in Cultural Change. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984. 234p. $29.95. LC 83- 12566. ISBN 0-313-23808-1. When Ivan Carnovsky said, in his clas- sic 1950 essay in Library Quarterly, "I have never met a public librarian who approved of censorship or one who failed to practice it in some measure," he put his finger on one of the most fundamental dilemmas faced by both academic and public librari- ans. For the late Eli Oboler and many like- minded crusaders, the problem of censor- ship in libraries has essentially turned on the question of whether one has made an adequate commitment to the moral goal of intellectual freedom; censorship, as David K. Berninghausen suggested in the title of his 1975 book, represents a Flight From Freedom. But is that too facile an explana- tionfor censorship as a historical phenom- enon? Nearly thirty years ago, in a report com- missioned by the National Book Commit- tee in 1956, Robert K. Merton and others called for a more objective approach. What was needed, they said, was research into the social psychology and economics of reading and the sociology of censor- ship. Through the years a number of am- bitious studies have been undertaken, such as Charles Busha's study of the atti- tudes of midwestern public librarians (Freedom Versus Suppression and Censorship, Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1972) and Marjory Fiske's study of school and public librarians in California (Book Se- lection and Censorship, Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 19,99); but few if any would have satisfied Merton, and certainly none treating the pre-McCarthy era. Until now. Evelyn Geller's book-the refinement of her 1980 doctoral dissertation at Columbia-is first and foremost an ambi- tious contribution to the sociology of pro- fessions. It is one of the very rare sociolog- ical studies of librarianship, and rarer still for its soundness and readability. Quite apart from her explanation of the develop- ment of the ideology of librarianship at midcentury, Geller makes a major contri- bution with the theoretical approach she takes to the structural dynamics of profes- sional development. Hers is an approach that might be applied with great advan- tage to the study of other professions. Many readers will value Geller's study for the historical account it gives of librari- ans' changing responses to issues of cen- sorship and academic freedom in America during the six decades between the found- ing of the ALA and the outbreak of the Second World War, an account she puts together almost entirely from statements and news items in Library Journal and other published sources. Early on, the li- brarians in her study were ardently de- fending their role as censors in book selec- tion against outside efforts to liberalize the public library. Later both public and aca- demic librarians, in the name of freedom and the public interest, actively resisted censorship pressures from their commu- nities and eventually enshrined their be- liefs in the Library Bill of Rights adopted by the ALA in 1939. But the change was not simply a process of developing a more mature sense of the correct balance between freedom and cen- sorship (some degree of which is inevita- ble in book selection); for, as Geller 263 264 College & Research Libraries shows, many features of our profession, including its goals and functions, have not been givens but have changed considera- bly as social situations and acceptance by others have shifted. She correctly sur- mises that the development of profes- sional ideology is irregular and does not reflect something so obvious as the pro- gressive evolution of a basic mission, or the swing of a pendulum from conserva- tism to liberalism, but is a multidimen- sional process that requires a more com- plicated theoretical explanation. This she finds in the "role-set" model and the play of competing values between librarians, their clients, and their sponsors (trustees, university bureaucrats, etc.). She identi- fies three major lines of stress as a source of recurring conflicts in the period covered by her study: disputes arising out of the ยท assertion of institutional and status auton- omy and those emerging from what she calls the "elitist-populist dilemma" and the "neutrality-advocacy dilemma." It is a thoroughly original approach, and only occasionally does the inevitable jargon of her discipline make trouble for the non- sociologist reader. As a postscript, one cannot resist adding that in 1967, when Geller first published an article on this subject in Library Journal-indeed, one that was included in Eric Munn's anthology, Book Selection and Censorship in the Sixties (New York: Bowker, 1969)-she was editor of School Library Journal; today she works as an in- vestment broker.- William A. Moffett, Oberlin College Library, Ohio. Light, Richard J., and David B. Pillemer. Summing Up: The Science of Reviewing Re- search. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1984. 191p. $17.50. LC 84- 4506 . ISBN 0-674-85430-6. (alk. paper) Advancing knowledge through a pro- cess of cumulation requires accurate and perceptive analyses of what has been studied, what has been discovered, and what remains to be done. Reviews of the literature, the authors maintain, are com- monly inadequate to the task, and they discuss, in detailed and sophisticated fashion, ways to improve them. They have excellent credentials for their task, May 1 1985 Light as professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Kennedy School of Government and Pillemer as assistant professor of Psychology at Wellesley Col- lege. A review of previous research, though an established expectation, is all too often done pro forma and in pedestrian fashion. The most common approach is simply to summarize, serially, studies that seem to have some relationship to the new study being undertaken. The result is often more confusing than helpful, for the sum- marized studies have been based upon different definitions, assumptions, and methods and produce findings that are in- conclusive or even contradictory. The re- searcher frequently concludes that the best course is simply to ignore the past and to begin again. Light and Pillemer convincingly argue that well-done re- views not only can prevent such duplica- tion but, even more important, can help to shape improved research studies that gen- uinely advance knowledge . In approaching their task, the authors emphasize four "themes": First, each review should be shaped to respond to a specific question or to a par- ticular purpose; a review designed as the basis for a pragmatic program decision ought to be quite different from a review that seeks to discover fundamental rela- tionships. Second, disagreements among studies, far from suggesting despair, ought to be considered opportunities for understand- ing; that different findings appear in stud- ies carried out in different places, for ex- ample, may suggest locales and their cultural components as promising vari- ables for further investigation. Third, the natural appeal of the objectiv- ity of quantitative measures should not be allowed to eliminate qualitative compo- nents; a statistically valid relationship may be comprehensible only in the con- text of informed interpretation of the real world situation. Fourth, statistical precision cannot re- place clear theoretical understanding; al- most always, even when a number of studies seems to produce consistent find- ings, penetrating judgment and analysis