College and Research Libraries 102 College & Research Libraries stantial grant subsidies. (A classic exam- ple, noted in passing by Becher, was the race to unlock the structure of DNA-the double helix.) The urban specialties are located mainly in the sciences. Rural specialties, on the other hand, are more relaxed, less competitive (but also less collaborative), and offer a sufficient number of research topics for every scholar to lay claim to his or her own area of expertise. Some specialties within the natural sciences are rural, as are presum- ably all areas of the humanities, social sciences, and the soft professions. Whether a specialty is urban or rural, of course, is reflected in the methods of communication used by the specialty to move around its constituent informa- tion. It is only in the final chapter on ''Impli- cations for Theory and Practice" that Be- cher introduces his fourth major dichot- omy, convergent/divergent. Convergent disciplinary communities are those with ''a sense of collectivity and mutual iden- tity," while divergent communities are "schismatic and ideologically frag- mented." All of the energy which the reader has expended in grasping the ar- guments presented in the first 150 pages of the book is amply rewarded in this fi- nal, illuminating chapter, for it is here that Becher synthesizes his information, and artfully weaves together his four di- chotomies to reveal some of the major social and conceptual distinctions among scholarly disciplines and com- munities. Becher takes special care throughout his book never to oversimplify. He is continuously aware that he is describing individual perceptions and perspectives in general terms, and that variations and exceptions will necessarily occur in par- ticular cases. He never presents his four dichotomies as absolutes but rather, in each instance, as the two end-points of a single continuum, along which different disciplines or disciplinary communities can be located. My only criticism of the study is that it tends to place perhaps too great an emphasis on the sciences. Be- cher covers all of the main sciences in his twelve representative disciplines, but January 1991 considers only a few disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Some of his dichotomies, notably hard/soft, and especially urban/rural, tend to cluster the sciences on one side, and all other disciplines on the other. This limits somewhat the conclusions he is able to draw about the differences among the nonscientific disciplines. Still, one can- not fault this approach too heavily, given the unchallenged centrality and predominance of the sciences among ac- ademic disciplines today-and, in any case, it is difficult to say whether Be- cher's conclusions would in fact have been much different had he delved more deeply into the humanities and social sciences, and had he included such sub- jects as philosophy, religion, or political science among his sample disciplines. Most of us in academic libraries have a true subject background in only one dis- cipline; when we enter academic librari- anship, we accept a few hackneyed dis- tinctions (scientists use journals, humanists monographs), but then we tend, nevertheless, to generalize our own disciplinary experience, and to imagine that the same qualities charac- terizing the discipline with which we are most familiar are shared by all disci- plines. A careful reading of Academic Tribes and Territories will serve as an ef- fective antidote to that affliction, and will do much to broaden the academic li- brarian's appreciation of the starkly di- vergent aims and values which underlie the many academic disciplines the re- search library is called upon to support.-Ross W. Atkinson, Cornell Uni- versity, Ithaca, NY. Technical Services Today and Tomor- row. Ed. by Michael Gorman. Engle- wood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1990. 207p. (ISBN 0-87287-608-X). LC 90-34856. Michael Gorman has brought together sixteen quality contributions ''to exam- ine the present state of each of the major areas of technical services in libraries, to provide individual views on the future of those areas and of technical services in general, and to furnish the reader with further readings on the topic in ques- tion.'' In this he has succeeded. I am less convinced, however, of his success in providing ''a modern version of the clas- sic Maurice Tauber work,'' Technical Ser- vices in Libraries (New York, 1954), be- cause the contributions differ so greatly in their focus. Some deal with core top- ics in technical services; others with in- teresting byways. Some are firmly based in current operations; others treat the broader issues. This variety does not lend itself to the goal of ''presenting a comprehensive picture of the present and future" of technical services. The whole is less than the sum of its excellent parts. Perhaps Gorman set his sights too high. Several chapters on core topics are among the best in the volume. I have sel- dom encountered such a concise and clear formulation of basic issues of bib- liographic control as in the contributions on descriptive cataloging (Gorman), subject cataloging and classification (Lois Mai Chan and Theodora Hodges), and authority control (Arnold Wajen- berg). I would make them required read- ing for all library school students. On the subject of technical services organiza- tion, Jennifer Younger and D. Kaye Ca- pen predict a paradigm shift as technical services becomes user oriented with em- phasis upon effectiveness rather than upon efficiency. At the operational level, Leslie Bleil and Charlene Renner describe the relationships between copy cataloging and the bibliographic net- works, while Karen Schmidt treats ac- quisitions. Marsha Stevenson and Paul Anderson expand their focus- automation of circulation services-to treat broader topics, such as training for automation and the health hazards of VDTs. Certain contributions cover general is- sues, albeit with a technical services fo- cus. Norman Brown gives a solid sum- mation of preservation in the research library, a gem worth reading by all aca- demic librarians. William Potter exam- ines the evolving online catalog with its implications both for technical and pub- lic services. Susari Rhee deals with Book Reviews 103 budgeting in general before turning to technical services in particular. The remaining chapters deal with by- ways in technical services. Among the best is the discussion of gifts and ex- changes by Joseph Barker. Edward Lockman treats library book gathering plans (approval plans and blanket or- ders) with a novel proposal for a national independent reviewing center. Jennifer Cargill has an operationally oriented chapter on accounting practice for the acquisitions budget, while Betsy Kruger deals with serial acquisitions, including the journal pricing crisis. Finally, Robert Burger describes the special needs of Slavic technical services. I recommend this book for most aca- demic libraries. The contributions are crisply written and pack a lot of informa- tion and insight into 200 pages. Even with the diverse contributors, I found relatively little overlap. Each chapter in- cludes footnotes or suggestions for fur- ther readings. The technical services li- brarian should find it profitable to read the book from cover to cover. Other li- brarians should pick and choose; I would suggest the more general and theoretical chapters to them. Without guidance, the library science student, however, might come away with a wrong impression of the relative impor- tance of various technical services areas because the number of pages is not con- sistent with the importance of the topic. Michael Gorman has edited an excellent compilation. He has not, however, pro- vided the definitive text on technical ser- vices for the 1990s.-Robert P. Holley, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. White, Herbert S. Librarians and the Awakening from Innocence: A Collection of Papers. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1989. 382p. $38.50 (ISBN 0-8161-1892-2). LC 88-32652. Herbert S. White is professor and former dean, School of Library and In- formation Science, Indiana University. He is also a perceptive and articulate commentator on the library profession. This volume includes thirty-seven arti- cles written by him and published be-