College and Research Libraries 534 College & Research Libraries A final note: it is fortunate that this man- ual is punched for a three-ring binder; the adhesive binding is so tight that in order to lay the book flat, its spine must be practi- cally broken.-Don Etherington, Harry Ran- som Humanities Research Center, The Univer- sity of Texas at Austin. Kantor, Paul B. Objective Performance Mea- sures for Academic and Research Libraries. Washington, D.C.: Association of Re- search Libraries, 1984. 76 p. $25. ISBN 0-918006-09-0. Dr. Paul Kantor, president of Tantalus, a library management consulting firm, has developed a set of library effectiveness measures which have been used in anum- ber of ARL libraries and which ARL has asked him to present in this small volume for use in other libraries. Three measures are describ~d in detail. One measure is an estimate of the chances that a user coming to the library to obtain a particular title will be able to lay hands on the desired item (approximately 48 percent chance in ARL libraries). By do- ing this analysis, a library may learn how much of its performance failure is associ- ated with (1) acquisitions, (2) user interac- tion with the catalog, and (3) circulation. Those patrons who are searching for spe- cific items in the catalog are asked by sur- vey workers if they will record on a form titles being sought. Before leaving the li- brary, the patron then notes on the form whether the desired items were found and deposits the form in a collection box. Staff then follow through to determine causes of failure. Other effectiveness measures described are (1) estimate of the time required to complete a particular process, such as ob- taining and checking out a particular book; and (2) identification of bottlenecks in library processes by use of delay analy- sis. These analyses are useful because they measure the performance of the library as a whole in a way that permits comparison with peer libraries. Some normative data for these measures are said to be available from Kantor. This book is intended to serve as a guide _ to enable other libraries to carry out these November 1985 procedures. However, as Kantor notes, in order to do this successfully, a library must be committed to self-evaluation and must also have available persons to serve as coordinators who have some research experience, some background in statistics, and considerable diplomatic skills. Data carefully collected by use of these method~ should be of benefit to a library in improving its public services.-Marjorie E. Murfin, William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library, Ohio State University, Columbus. Kronick, David A. The Literature of the Life Sciences: Reading, Writing, Research. Phil- adelphia: lSI Press, 1985. 219p. $35. LC 85-4283. ISBN 0-89495-045-2. David A. Kronick's extensive and varied experience as a medical librarian is evident in this highly personal introduction to the literature of the life sciences. Intended for the user of the literature, the book empha- sizes useful information rather than refer- ence or bibliographic sources. Conse- quently, Kronick's book complements standard sources such as Smith's Guide to the Literature of the Life Sciences (Burgess, 1980). This work includes chapters on a wide variety of topics such as the historical de- velopment of the literature, the primary and secondary literature, characteristics of the literature, writing and publishing, in- dexing languages, citation indexing, searching, and personal information files. Kronick's interest in the history of science is evident in the abundance of information he provides on the development of scien- tific communication. In fact, his knowl- edge and fascination with the literature of science are present throughout the book. In a sense the book could as easily be enti- tled The Literature of the Sciences. While Kronick uses examples from the biomedi- cal literature (predominantly medical), the subject matter of the book has equal appli- cability to other sciences as Kronick's ex- tensive examples from physics and psy- chology confirm. The book includes a list of 484 literature references. Both the references and exam- ples in the text include works published as recently as 1983. Therefore, the contents are reasonably current. Some important topics such as downloading and use of mi- crocomputers are discussed but in much less detail than current applications and interest require; there is a greater loss of currency in these areas than in the litera- ture references. The chapter entitled ''Citation Indexing and Analysis'' provides a disproportion- ately detailed discussion of Science Citation Index and other publications of the Insti- tute for Scientific Information. The signifi- cance of the lSI publications would be bet- ter stated and explained in accordance with the treatment given Biological Ab- stracts and other important secondary publications. Kronick correctly empha- sizes the value and place of citation index- ing but the author's interest in the topic may be greater than the interest of the typ- ical reader for whom the book is intended. The emphasis is also unfortunate in view of the book's publisher. Kronick mentions the existence and role of libraries but in two instances he fails to mention how the library assists the re- searcher. In discussing reprints, Kronick mentions the practice of photocopying by Recent Publications 535 readers and commercial sources for both copies and originals, but he does not men- tion the elaborate and formalized mecha- nisms existing among libraries for obtain- ing photocopies. Similarly, Kronick indirectly suggests that the library has a role in online literature searching but he does not adequately describe the complex service which a library's staff provides; in discussing a search conducted through an intermediary he does not link the interme- diary with a library or information center. Kronick writes gracefully and each chapter is a carefully delineated unit. More careful editing to delete occasional first person references would have given the text greater consistency. The librarian or information scientist will find a good deal of interesting information in this book both for its own value and for the as- sistance it provides in working with and instructing patrons. In all likelihood a book such as this one will find its way to library shelves rather than to the labora- tory or office shelves of its intended audience.-Richard f. Dionne, Kline Science Library, Yale University, New Haven, Con- necticut. ABSTRACTS The following abstracts are .based on those prepared by the ERIC Clearinghouse of Infor- mation Resources, School of Education, Syra- cuse University. Documents with an ED number here may be ordered in either microfiche (MF) or paper copy (PC) from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service, P.O. Box 190, Arlington, VA 22210. Orders should include ED number, specify for- mat desired, and include payment for docu- ment and postage. Further information on ordering documents and on current postage charges may be obtained from a recent issue of Resources in Educa- tion. Increasing Special Library Collection Use in Very Computer Intensive Environ- ments: Automatic Bibliographic Com- pilation and the Dissemination of Elec- tronic Newsletters. By James Joseph Sanchez. 1983. 37p. ED 252 243. MF- $0.83; PC-$3.32 plus postage. This paper describes the development and implementation of an automatic bibliographic facility and an electronic newsletter created for a special collection of aerospace and mechanical engineering monographs and articles at the University of Arizona. The project included the development of an online catalog, increasing the depth of bibliographic description, provid- ing the beginnings of a comprehensive citation index for selected subjects, and developing an automatic bibliographic facility and local area electronic newsletter. Appendixes, which make up the major part of the report, comprise: . (1) the full code listing for the search program, written in FORTRAN 4, which demonstrates the relative simplicity of the facility for develop- ing bibliographies; (2) the help note written to aid the user in implementing a search; and (3) the full text of an electronic newsletter (the IGEL Bibliographer) developed to make all bib- liographic searches available within the inter- ested group. The sample newsletter includes short bibliographi~s on eigenvalues, geometric