College and Research Libraries


594 College & Research Libraries 

conversion in Europe: The Council of 
Europe's Initiatives," by Peter Rau 
(Hochschulbibliothekszentrum, Koln). 

Of particular interest to American cat-
alogers may be Alan Jeffreys's paper, 
''The Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 
2d Edition (AACR2): Now and in Eu-
rope." While he notes that AACR2 has 
been translated into more than a dozen 
languages, from Arabic to Urdu, Jeffreys 
states, "I see little prospect of AACR2 
being extended beyond the Anglo-Ameri-
can environment in which it is firmly em-
bedded." The more likely candidate for an 
international cataloging code, he writes, 
is the MARC format, with its more easily 
transferred numeric structure, or a 
whole new set of ISBDs, cataloging rules, 
and machine formats developed, this 
time, in synchronicity. 

The thirty papers are framed by excel-
lent summarizing reports by the editor, 
Lorcan Dempsey of the Centre for Biblio-
graphic Management, and by Paula 
Goosens of the European Foundation for 
Library Cooperation (EFLC). Dempsey's 
introduction gives an overview of the 
topics covered in the volume, citing the 
reasons for differences in developments 
in the European countries and speculat-
ing on the difficulties these differences 
pose for the future. In Goosens's sum-
mary chapter, titled ''The European Li-
brary: A Summing Up," she creates a 
future scenario and a model for a Euro-
pean Library and then uses the contents 
of the papers to explore the chances of 
"realizing in practice such an ambitious 
cooperative program." Goosens exam-
ines the new tools and techniques neces-
sary for bibliographic control and access, 
and she reviews the political, economic, 
and organizational structures needed for 
an "active and positive contribution to a 
European cooperative program." She 
concludes with a list of the requirements 
for bibliographic access in Europe: qual-
ity databases, access via user-friendly 
OPACs, national bibliographic utilities 
in each country, and cooperative efforts 
on a supranational level. 

The value of this volume lies in the 
insight it provides the reader into the 
projects and innovations of European li-

November 1991 

braries, institutions with which the 
American cataloging specialist usually 
has little contact. It is easy and pleasant 
to browse and choose among the thirty 
short essays on a myriad of specialized 
topics, and the keynote and summary 
essays provide an excellent overview of 
the state of European bibliographic af-
fairs in 1989.-Heidi L. Hutchinson, Uni-
versity of California, Riverside. 

Hardesty, Larry L. Faculty and the Li-
brary: The Undergraduate Experience. 
Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1991. 170p. 
$37.50 (ISBN 0-89391-685-4). 
Larry Hardesty (Eckerd College) is in-

terested in the oft-repeated maxim that 
the library is the heart of the college. 
According to Hardesty, previous studies 
on the use of the library clearly show that 
this truism is not, in fact, true. Working 
with the concept that student use of the 
library is prompted primarily by the fac-
ulty, he has investigated the attitudes of 
college faculty toward the library. The 
results of his study are useful and infor-
mative. 

The most useful parts of this book are 
the historical sections, which show 
clearly how little has changed over the 1 

years. Hardesty cites a number of stud-
ies that show that college libraries serve 
primarily as study halls and reserve 
book collections, as they have for so 
many years. 

The key chapter in this book, "Select-
ing Library Materials for Undergradu-
ates," should be required reading for 
every beginning college librarian. In this 
chapter, Hardesty shows that there is 
often little relationship between the need 
for library material and the actual mate-
rial acquired. This discrepancy is most 
evident in the case of serials. In a compar-
ison of mathematical journals held by six 
college libraries, Hardesty demonstrates 
that the library with the least need and the 
least money subscribed to the most jour-
nals. He also shows that an alarmingly 
large proportion of books purchased by 
college libraries is never used. 

My disappointment with this book 
stems from the fact that it is more con-
cerned with questions about methodol-



ogy than with librarianship. I would 
have preferred that Hardesty had abbre-
viated the statistical and methodological 
sections and concentrated on the lessons 
to be learned from his research. 

The lesson that he seems to draw is 
that other college libraries should emu-
late Earlham College. It is clear that of 
the college faculties he studied, Earlham's 
is the most successfully integrated with its 
library's program, a fact explained, of 
course, by the fundamental role of library 
instruction in that college's mission. It is 
certainly not the model for every college, 
as each has its own particular mission. 

Hardesty argues further that librari-
ans should work closely with faculty to 
encourage use of the library, an argu-
ment that assumes the library is always 
vital in the educational process. There 
are many courses in which library use 
should, in fact, be discouraged by faculty 
members. The assumption that the li-
brary should be used more extensively 
than it is leads Hardesty to devote his 
chapter on working with the faculty to 
ideas about how librarians can change 
faculty instruction. Instead of being a 
useful guide to working with faculty, 
this chapter is about the need to reform 
the faculty's teaching. I am not con-
vinced that it is a librarian's function to 
change faculty behavior. 

Although the research in this book is 
well presented, what, one has to ask, are 
its implications? It may be that instead of 
working to change how faculty teach, we 
librarians should work to change how 
we run libraries. Perhaps we do not need 
so many reference librarians. Perhaps 
we should cut the periodicals that are 
never used. Perhaps we should concen-
trate on having usable college libraries 
rather than miniature research libraries. 
We could certainly save colleges a lot of 
money. 

This book raises a number of questions 
that need discussion. I hope that 
Hardesty's next book will be less about 
sociology and research and more about 
how libraries should respond to the im-
plications of that research. This book is 
valuable as a handy distillation of much 
research, but it is not the guide to work-

Book Reviews 595 

ing with faculty that college librarians 
need.-John Ryland, Oglethorpe Univer-
sity, Atlanta, Georgia. 

Ross, Dorothy. The Origins of American 
Social Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Cam-
bridge Univ. Pr., 1991. 508p. $29.95 
(ISBN 0-521-35092-1). 
This is an important book. It presents 

the thesis that American social science 
developed under the influence of a na-
tional ideology of uniqueness, or "ex-
ceptionalism," exaggerated to the point 
of claiming that this country was exempt 
from the vicissitudes of European his-
tory. The result was an American social 
science that became excessively abstract 
and ahistorical. 

Ross's book is organized chronologi-
cally in four parts. In part one, she places 
the beginning of social science in the 
eighteenth century as part of a historical 
development she calls the "discovery of 
modernity," and she traces the develop-
ment of American ideas and their diver-
gence from what was seen to be the 
European experience. American ex-
ceptionalism was formed by the experi-
ence of gaining national independence, 
and it was reinforced by celebration of 
our republican political institutions and 
abundant natural resources. When liber-
alism emerged early in the nineteenth 
century, with an inherent conflict between 
humanism and commercialism, human-
ism and freedom from oppression were 
considered secure for exceptionalist Amer-
ica; so national energy could focus on 
commercialism associated with free en-
terprise. Early social science writers of 
this time emphasized civil liberty, self-
government, private ownership, and 
free trade. Up until the Civil War, they 
believed in natural law discovered 
through liberal enlightenment, and they 
regarded the study of history as an intru-
sion of superstition and corruption. 

In part two, covering the thirty years 
after the Civil War, Ross focuses on the 
crisis in exceptionalist ideology and the 
formation of social science disciplines, 
particularly economics, political science, 
and sociology, which she regards as the 
"core disciplines." From the founding of