College and Research Libraries 622 College & Research Libraries assumptions and components. Readers are effectively marched through the fun- damental steps in the strategic planning process: analysis of environment, identifi- cation of strategies, formulation of action plans, construction of objectives, genera- tion of goals, review of strategies, creation of ''early warning system'' to monitor progress, implementation of action plans, adjustment of plans as required, and recy- cling of planning process. The reader will appreciate this well-organized and clear presentation of strategic planning and its focus on the effectiveness of the monitor- ing, measuring, and communication de- vices. The reviewer was particularly in- trigued by the concept of MBWA- Management by Walking (or Wandering) Around. The presentation would have been improved by expanding attention to the relationship between the planning and budget processes and by discussing the need for organizationwide commit- ment to the planning effort. The chapter on the relationship of infor- mation resources management and deci- sion support systems to strategic planning is crucial to the book's thesis. A well- designed information system provides an empirical basis for planning and decision making; presents intelligence about the environment; encourages assessment of historical, current, and future conditions; and permits evaluation of the planning process and monitoring of progress. The important role of online database services and the institution's library in supporting access to information resources is cited. The general principles advocated for effec- tive information management systems- integration, interaction, flexibility, and needs orientation-will be familiar to li- brarian readers. Harman and McClure have provided a well-organized and -documented study. The literatures of organizational theory, planning, information management, and sponsored-project administration are ef- fectively integrated. Graphics, charts, and tables are used liberally to present com- plex ideas and synthesize research find- ings, and each chapter is clearly organized and concluded with a well-written sum- mary of the key concepts. The most signif- November 1986 icant weakness of the work and perhaps, in my view, its greatest strength is the seeming focus on sponsored-project ad- ministration, as indicated in the title. Some potential readers will thus not be at- tracted to the volume, although much of the material would be of value to a broad audience. One could read the book, freely substituting a host of professions for the sponsored-project administrator. The au- thors conclude that "people are the orga- nization and information is the most criti- cal resource at their disposal." Haven't librarians been advocating these ideas for years?-]ames G. Neal, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park. Keaveney, Sydney Starr. Contemporary Art Documentation and Fine Arts Libraries. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1986. 181p. $17.50. LC 85-22234. ISBN 0-8108-1859- 0. A Reader in Art Librarianship. Ed. by Philip Pacey for the Section of Art Li- braries. IFLA Publications, no . 34. Miin- chen: K.G. Saur, 1985. 199p. $20 ISBN 3-598-20398-5. The examination of the information flow in the contemporary art world and the im- pact of the resulting interrelationships on library collecting patterns is an adaptation of Keaveney's doctoral thesis. After re- viewing information science techniques for measuring the flow of information in other fields and applying them to the art world, she tested her assumptions against the survey results on library holdings of a set of contemporary artists. She also inter- viewed a number of artists and others in the art world to determine patterns of communicatiop. and the placement of ''gatekeepers'' on the path of information as it flows from the artists to society at large. Keaveney selected forty contemporary American artists and analyzed the holdings of fourteen New York City-area art li- braries (five museum libraries, five aca- demic libraries, and four public libraries), checking holdings in both card catalogs and vertical files but not in periodical files or indexes. Additionally, she checked sev- eral major bibliographic sources, including the database of the Research Libraries In- formation Network (RUN). The searches through the fourteen libraries and the addi- tional bibliographic resources enabled Keaveney to compile a list of 688 titles on her selected artists. The expected findings were that the art libraries would hold information about the artists in direct proportion to their fame and that largely the same material would be held by all the libraries. Further, it was expected that monographs, which may be acquired through normal biblio- graphic channels, would be in all libraries, . with other types of materials, exhibition catalogs and ephemera, held in inverse proportions to their numbers. Instead, Keaveney found that when the holdings of the individual libraries were compared to the ideal list, the highest percentage of the 688 was 69 percent, and most libraries held less than 25 percent. Other findings include a lack of overlap, with "unique" items found in thirteen of the fourteen li- braries and a striking 60 percent found in only one of the libraries. Monographs were held evenly across the libraries, though most held only about half of those Recent Publications 623 available. For exhibition catalogs, the holdings were less evenly distributed, with greater incidence of uniqueness, per- haps reflecting difficulties in acquisition and cataloging. The two sources checked for coverage in the bibliographic mainstream-Books in Print and Art Books, 1950-1979-included 6.5 percent and 2 percent, respectively, of the 688 titles. The examination of the vertical files of ephemeral material yielded up a larger number of items, the number of pieces a library held on the forty artists ranging from 1,423 to a mere 18. Museum libraries hold, on average, the largest number of items per artist and academic libraries, the least. There was no attempt to do an over- lap study or comprehensive checklist to check completeness of holdings because of differing policies regarding the materi- als. For example, while artist monographs were usually cataloged, exhibition cata- logs, even major ones, might be held in vertical files. Conversely, some libraries cataloged even slim dealer catalogs and in- dexed, in the card catalog, significant en- tries in a monograph or periodical articles. WHEN THE QUESTION IS SERVICE THE ANSWER IS AMBASSADOR • FIRM ORDERS • CONTINUATIONS • APPROVAL PLANS • BINDING SERVICES • ON-LINE ORDERING 11 serving college and university libraries for over 12 years" AMBASSADOR BooK SeRVICE, INC. 42 CHASNER STREET • HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK 11550 toll free 800-431-8913 in New York call collect (516) 489-401.1 624 College & Research Libraries As a bibliometric study, this research is only technically interesting. The work be- comes significant, however, when exam- ining or defending a library's collection development, processing, or preservation policies. For example, if a library collects only those materials cited in standard bib- l~ographic sources, a significant research collection may not be developed because the key documents for an art movement may be the dealers' announcements of group shows. Further, the low overlap, even across the readily available mono- graphs, suggests that interlibrary loan ar- rangements, coupled with cooperative collection development, may prove to be critical in enabling researchers to consult the full range of available materials on an artist or movement. The real significance of this study, though, lies with the analysis of the vari- ous vertical file holdings and the diversity and uniqueness of the materials found there. The art world is concerned with vis- ual images, and this documentation in- cludes books and periodicals, plus repre- sentations of the art itself, often in ephemeral form: postcards, reproduc- tions, exhibition checklists, and banners. For lesser-known or emerging artists these ephemera may be the only docu- mentation of their works, yet they present difficulties in acquisitions, cataloging, and storage for libraries, and their collection, even by major art libraries, will reflect the judgments made by the larger art world. That is, ephemera on better-known art- ists, or from more influential galleries, will be more likely to be acquired and retained. Too many art libraries have had to aban- don their vertical files due to expense, al- though the files tend to continue to exist in museum libraries. In the history of art libraries, vertical files and various forms of periodical index- ing arose to fill the same need: access to published information outside of books. A . combination of technology, commercial efforts, and cooperation has made period- ical indexes available for most areas of ar- tistic endeavor. Vertical files have languished-though the best have been destroyed through ·overuse. If the infor- mation traditionally contained in such November 1986 files is valuable, and Keaveney's work suggests that it might be, then can tech- nology, commercial efforts, and coopera- tion be harnessed again for its preserva- tion and dissemination? Cavils include failure to define until late in the book the word monograph, which has a very specific meaning in an art- library context, and the review of the find- ings in the RLIN database. The searching of the RLIN database in 1981 was per- formed in the early stages of RLIN' s devel- opment as an art information database, when most of the major art libraries that now contribute bibliographic data were just getting started as participants and ar- chival tapes were as yet unloaded. It would have been useful, in preparing this edition of the study, to have repeated the RLIN searches now that RLIN has ma- tured as an art bibliographic database. The collection of essays, edited by Philip Pacey-who until the IFLA meetings in 1985 was chair of its Section of Art Libraries-was not prepared about the "how" of art librarianship but about the "why." And while Pacey is sure of the book's purpose, this reviewer is unsure of its intended audience. As with any compi- lation, though, part of the publication's value is the bringing together of otherwise hard-to-find, yet timeless, essays. Of the twenty-nine presented here, nine were first published before 1970, and fully half first appeared in British library journals. (A number of the essays were first pre- sented at IFLA meetings). The book has four main sections: the first examines the history and nature of art librarianship and includes several discus- sions of the desired characteristics and qualifications of the ''compleat art librar- ian," to use the term contributed by Trevor Fawcett, past chair of the Art Li- braries Society (ARLIS.). These essays combine well with the more bureaucratic standards statements from ARLIS and the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) found in the appendix. The fourteen essays in the second sec- tion describe the art library from the per- spective of four classes of users: art histo- rians and curators, artists and art students, designers, and the public. Ex- On microfilm ... from Research Publications The Golden Age Spanish Theology, History and Literature from 1472 to 1700 Spanish Rare Boo.ks of the Golden Age offers the opportunity to research the wide variety of literature written in Spain or composed in Spanish from 14 7 2 to 1 7 00. Spanish Rare Books of the Golden Age includes drama, works on jewish and Christian theology, medicine, and classical texts written in Latin and vernacular translations. Spanish Rare Books of the Golden Age represents the writings of Boscan, Luis de Leon, Borja, Cervantes, Aleman, and others. Based on a collection at the Library of the University of Illinois, Spanish Rare Books of the Golden Age encompasses the development of prose and poetic styles from a period rich in religious, literary, and political works. Divided into units of approximately 50 reels each, the standing order unit price is only $3,000 per unit (over 15% off the individual unit price). Prices for U.S. and Canada only. Shipping and handling charges will be added. To order, or for more information on Spanish Rare Books of the Golden Age call or write: Research Publlcadons 12 Lunar Drive/Drawer AB VVoodbridge,Ct06525 (203) 397-2600 Toll-free: 1-800-RlACH-RP TVVX: 71 0-465-6345 FAX: 203-397-3893 Outside North and South America P.O.Box45 Reading, RG 1 8Hf England nt: 0734-583247 RLEX: 848336NADL G research publications® 626 College & Research Libraries cept for students wishing to gain an un- derstanding of the profession of art librari- anship, most of the essays in this section serve little purpose other than profes- sional breast-beating. Active art librarians are aware of the range of information needs their users have, though Frances Lichten's essay, written in 1959 from the perspective of a library user, keeps the reader mindful of the obstacles well- meaning librarians can throw up in the path of the researcher. In the third section, the essayists at- tempt to analyze the control and retrieval challenges presented by the forms, partic- ularly the visual forms, in which art is doc- umented. For the experienced visual arts librarian, these essays provide the most to ponder. Trevor Fawcett examines the sub- ject limits of the art library by looking first at the expanding limits of art itself, con- cluding that using standard classification schemes to define the art library leads to "arbitrary unions and separations" and proposing an artifact-based scheme in- stead. In the next essay, written three years later for the International Seminar on Information Problems in Art History (March 1982), Fawcett takes on the inade- quacy of classification and subject index- ing for retrieval, particularly of images- an inadequacy that the Art and Architecture Thesaurus has begun to meet. Wolfgang Freitag picks up Fawcett's concern for ac- cess to the visual image in a paper pre- sented at the IFLA meetings in August 1982, "The Indivisibility of Art Librarian- ship.'' In this essay he reminds us that in the study of art it is the art object itself that is the primary source of information and that visual representations, whether illus- trations in books, reproduction engrav- ings, slides, or videodisc images, are sur- rogates, as the originals are not always available for study. Yet, to the detriment of researchers, the image and print collec- tions are too often separate, both physi- cally and philosophically. The final section reviews the movement toward national and international cooper- ation among art librarians. The first essay, by Freitag (Fogg Art Museum), dates from 1968 and sets forth a plan leading to com- munication among the art libraries of the November 1986 world. The final two essays, by William B. Walker (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Philip Pacey, describe the progress art librarians have made in international co- operation from the perspective of two who were early and influential leaders in those efforts . Taken individually, several of the essays are delights. The one written in 1908 by Jane Wright, then librarian of the Cincin- nati Art Museum, describes why art librar- ianship was different from other branches at a time when art libraries were growing rapidly and developing, or finding the need for, some of the bibliographical ap- paratus we now take as standard: indexes of periodical articles and reproductions, such as the Periodical Index of the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago or the H. W. Wilson Company's Art Index; in- dividualized thesauri for local collections, such as the A very collection at Columbia University; and picture and vertical files whose value has been proven by the sub- sequent generations of researchers. The essay is full of the joy of having a job in which one feels as if one can make a difference.-Karen Muller, Quality Books, Inc., Lake Bluff, Illinois. Library Science Annual. V.1 (1985). Ed. by Bohdan S. Wynar and Heather Cam- eron. Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlim- ited, 1985. 204p. $37.50. LC 85-650346. ISBN 0-87287-495-8. Publishers in our field have two choices: to publish significant monographs or self- sustaining reference books. The latter ap- proach is often more time-consuming and expensive than the former. Such pub- lishers, however, count on profits from standing orders and repeat sales as new editions become necessary. Here, Libraries Unlimited has decided on that latter approach. Apparently they be- lieve that researchers in library and infor- mation science generate so much new in- formation each year about their field that others, especially librarians, will find it use- ful to have an annual compilation that will (1) "review all En:glish-language mono- graphs and reference books in library sci- ence published in a year, ... (2) evaluate all English-language library science period-