College and Research Libraries 476 College & Research Libraries better term for what should be happen- ing in college libraries. "The Role of the Faculty" addresses this much-debated factor in college li- brary collection development with four essays. Ronald Epp reviews several re- cent studies dealing with higher educa- tion and scholarly communication and argues that college librarians ought to interact more with learned societies, granting agencies, etc. A 1988 survey of faculty research habits at Albion College is reported by Larry Oberg, while Larry Hardesty cites findings from several stud- ies concerning faculty attitudes and partic- ipation in book selection. Mary Scudder and John Scudder describe how faculty involvement in collection development is encouraged at Lynchburg College. This volume concludes with a section entitled "Trends in Collection Develop- ment." Two of the papers (by Wanda Dole and Ann Niles) remind readers once again of the difficulties in designing an approval plan for a college library with a small materials budget. Two other pa- pers focus on preservation and its im- portance in college libraries. Charlotte Brown and Kathleen Moretto Spencer describe a preservation project under- taken in 1985 at Franklin and Marshall College. Joanne Schneider Hill reports on a 1988 survey of preservation prac- tices at fifty-five college libraries. Peter Deekle's bibliographic essay on the liter- ature of college library collection devel- opment rounds out this section. Most of the essays presented in this volume are relatively short, and all are quite readable. Readers presently work- ing in college libraries will find in some of the essays ideas that they may try in their own libraries; other essays will only be restatements of the obvious. The volume will probably be most useful for those who, never having worked in a college library (as defined by the edi- tors), are about to seek employment there.-Rose Mary Magrill, East Texas Baptist University, Marshall, Texas. Publishing Research Quarterly. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Periodi- cals Consortium, Rutgers University, September 1991 1985- . Individuals: $32/year; institu- tions: $68/year. (ISSN 0741-6148). Publishing Research Quarterly entered the crowded field of professional jour- nals more than six years ago under the title Book Research Quarterly. As be- hooves a product designed and edited by publishing experts, the new journal sought to define a niche for itself: some- where between a trade journal like Pub- lishers Weekly and a research journal like the Journal of Communications. It would combine up-to-the-minute reports on practice with new research, discussion of broad concepts, and historical studies. Its closest kin is probably Scholarly Pub- lishing (Toronto), which is oriented to- ward the humanities and deals mainly with university press publishing. Publish- ing Research Quarterly, however, reflects the interdisciplinary, social-science style of its parent, Transaction Publishers, located at Rutgers. The recent name change does not signal any change in emphasis, for this journal has always covered the gamut of publishing as industry, profession, and cultural phenomenon. A typical issue consists of several arti- cl~s (often illustrated), quarterly U.S. book industry statistics, and a few book reviews. Subject coverage is unusually varied. Picture a set of concentric circles with the publishing industry-past, present, and future-at the center. As the circles widen, they encompass specific kinds of publications; the legal and so- cial environment of publishing; literacy and reading; technology; authors and writing; libraries; bookselling; and higher education. It hardly needs pointing out that academic librarianship shares many of these concerns, though the center of interest would be located elsewhere. How well has the journal fulfilled its intentions? In some respects, very well. The variety of materials that has ap- peared over the last few years is the mark of an energetic editor. The interna- tional scope of the journal is admirable, ranging from the increasingly interdepen- dent world of big publishing (North America, Europe, and Japan) to the Third World. The list of contributors is international and includes publishers, consultants, educators, librarians, econ- Oinists, sociologists, and historians. In addition to submitted manuscripts, there are commissioned reports of research in progress, statistics, updates on orga- nizations, and book excerpts. Recent special issues-"Publishing Educa- tion," "Changes in the Environment of Scholarly Publishing," and "Europe 1992"-focus on timely topics. In an- other vein entirely are the interesting historical studies of reading that have appeared from time to time. These stud- ies reflect the current interest in popular culture, literacy, and reader response. Not surprisingly, this variety is both a strength and a weakness. At times the journal appears thin, uneven, or choppy, as when a study of "Economic Reform and the Dearth of Books in Nigeria" is followed by an explanation of "CD- ROM Data Storage Technology." The whole does not always succeed in being more than the sum of its parts. Academic librarians should definitely take a look at this journal, which regret- tably is not included in the standard in- dexes of librarianship. They should do so for two reasons. First of all, librarians need to understand how publishers view issues such as pricing, distribution, copyright, and changing formats. One comes away with a strong sense of what is worrying at least some publishers: loss of readers to audiovisual media, loss of the trust of universities and librarians, uncertainty about the risk of publishing in new formats, and anger that increas- ing consolidation and globalization of publishing, printing, bookselling, and distribution have destroyed "many au- thors, entrepreneurs, managers and publishing programs." The second reason for reading Publish- ing Research Quarterly is of less immedi- ate relevance to libraries: the intrinsic value in understanding the world of publishing, described by the editor, Beth Luey, as "our most important cultural industry." Long dismissed as the "acci- dental profession," publishing is only now beginning to establish itself as a full- fledged profession. Educational pro- grams and degrees are springing up (at Book Reviews 477 NYU and Simon Fraser, for example). Boundaries are being defined. Academic conferences are taking place. Profes- sional publications (such as this journal) are appearing. This fragile growth is oc- curring at a time of unprecedented merg- ers, cutthroat international competition, declining readership, and dizzying techno- logical change. Ubrarianship seems almost placidincomparison.-JeanAlexander,North- western University, Evanston, Illinois. Kohler, Robert E. Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Science 1900- 1945. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1991. 414 p. alk. paper, $34.95 (ISBN 0-226-45060-0). LC 90-43520. Historians of science have since tired of the debate in their ranks between internalists and externalists. The former group, which provided the core around which the discipline crystallized in this country shortly after World War II, has concentrated on the internal dynamic of the growth of scientific knowledge and often assumes that broader cultural fea- tures are not of great significance to the content of science. The externalists, who came to dominate the field in the 1970s, have concerned themselves with the po- litical, economic, and institutional envi- ronments in which science is done. The debate has faded because many histori- ans of science saw it as fruitless. In some ways, the difference is merely aesthetic: one group likes to study the changing con- tent of scientific knowledge; the other pre- fers to look at the circumstances in which scientists work. Moreover, some observ- ers would say that the best work of the past decade and a half has combined aspects of both programs-concerning itself with the content of scientific knowledge, but seeing contextual fac- tors as crucial in the development of that knowledge. Robert Kohler, a trained biochemist and an unabashed advocate of tradi- tional externalism, abandoned internal- ism soon after he began doing research at the newly opened Rockefeller Ar- chives in 1974. Kohler's work since then has concentrated on the institutional his- tory of laboratories, university depart-