College and Research Libraries


184 College & Research Libraries 

pioneer in the new genre of electronic 
serials. By now, as directories of e-serials 
quickly show, librarians have more elec-
tronic communication forums than any 
other profession. The lesson to be 
learned is that electronic serials, even 
when physically unprepossessing and 
produced on shoestring budgets, can be 
highly visible and powerful. 

Almost anyone with an idea, commit-
ment, and spare time, at an institution 
with network connections and a half-
friendly computer center, can start an 
e-list or newsletter or even a journal, and 
possibly should. The networks so far are 
subsidized. It is an excellent time to ex-
periment, to find out what the commu-
nity needs and wants, to learn what the 
community supports over time and in 
what form. Eventually, all these publica-
tions will be more sophisticated, more 
commonplace, less of a novelty. While 
they will undoubtedly be "better," it will 
be hard to match the early days' excite-
ment we still feel as we log on to our 
e-mail and LISTSERV, or the Mailer Dae-
mon bring us the next issue of our cur-
rent favorites, of which NSPI is most 
certainly one.-Ann Okerson, Association 
of Research Libraries, Washington, D.C. 

DePew, John N. A Library, Media and 
Preservation Handbook. Santa Barbara, 
Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1991. 441 p. (ISBN 
0-87436-543-0). LC 91-16501. 
The national concern for preserving 

the intellectual content of great research 
collections impinges increasingly on the 
jobs, time, and attention of librarians 
who are not preservation specialists. For 
these professionals, as well as for those 
in smaller institutions, this is a useful 
and interesting book. 

It is generally successful in terms of its 
stated aims of bringing together a por-
tion of the vast literature of the past two 
decades on the conservation and preser-
vation of library materials and of 
making it available to those who have 
little knowledge of preservation. It is, 
then, designed as an introduction "to the 
basic environmental controls, materials, 
processes and techniques ... required to 
house and preserve library materials." 

March 1992 

The organization and range of topics 
treated make it clear that DePew under-
stands preservation in the broadest 
possible sense, that preventive measures 
from climate control to disaster pre-
paredness are as important as salvage 
activities, and that non print media merit 
the same consideration as paper. The 
handbook is divided into nine sections 
covering paper and papermaking; the 
environment; care and handling of li-
brary materials; binding and in-house 
repair; acid paper and brittle books; pho-
tographic, audio, and magnetic media; 
surveys of buildings and collections; dis-
aster preparedness and recovery; and 
preservation services, suppliers, and ed-
ucational opportunities. Ten appendices 
supply further details, specifications, 
sample forms and surveys, and tech-
niques. Because the language of preserva-
tion is complex and technical, a short 
glossary is provided, and a more complete 
glossary is planned as a companion 
volume. The reference bibliography at 
the end of each section is a useful tool. 

The handbook falls short, however, of 
being a definitive, all-purpose summary 
of the state of preservation knowledge. 
For example, because of limitations on 
space, DePew deliberately excludes dis-
cussion of the administration and or-
ganization of preservation activities, 
referring readers to the Association of 
Research Libraries' Preservation Organi-
zation and Staffing, SPEC Kit 160 (Wash-
ington, D.C., 1990) and works by noted 
librarians in the field. 

In addition, other omissions and a 
troubling lack of balance among the is-
sues considered and the level of detail in 
their treatment detract from the book's 
value. The author's criteria for treating 
certain topics at length, while only sum-
marizing others, are not articulated. The 
book begins, for instance, with a very, 
perhaps unnecessarily, detailed section 
(forty pages) on paper and papermak-
ing. Highly interesting for the nonspe-
cialist, it leads one to expect a similar 
level of attention to the treatment of 
paper. Several aspects of this treatment 
are discussed, with more attention given 
to deacidification (fifteen pages), a tech-



nology neither fully evolved nor widely 
used, at least on a large scale, than to 
preservation microfilming (eleven pages), 
photocopying (three pages), and digital 
techniques (two pages). 

In the case of microfilming, this brev-
ity seems problematic for a major preser-
vation tool that is widely used in 
research libraries. The section on preser-
vation microfilming concentrates on the 
selection of materials suitable for film-
ing, bibliographic control, and the place 
of microfilm in the array of preservation 
options. These considerations are drawn 
from Nancy Gwinn's Preservation Micro-
filming: A Guide for Librarians and Archivists 
(1987) and various RLG publications. The 
section on types of film is very brief, and 
given the level of technical detail else-
where, one would expect a fuller discus-
sion about the nature of silver halide, 
diazo, and vesicular film, and the rea-
sons why the latter two are unsuitable 
for archival film copies. Nor is the glos-
sary helpful here in noting the expected 
longevity of these types of film, and no-
where does the caveat appear that the 
different sorts of film should never be 
stored together. 

A more serious shortcoming is the 
author's failure to convey the urgency of 
the brittle book problem. Likewise, he 
ignores the efforts of such entities as the 
Commission on Preservation and Access 
and the Council on Library Resources to 
craft a national agenda for preserving 
the intellectual content of an estimated 
twelve million unique titles in the na-
tion's research collections. The Commis-
sion is mentioned, but nowhere are its 
activities summarized. DePew mentions 
the Library of Congress's goal of deacid-
ifying one million books annually over 
twenty years but not the National En-
dowment for the Humanities's Brittle 
Book Program, a twenty-year plan pro-
jecting the preservation microfilming of 
three million brittle books and serials. 

There is no discussion of the resulting 
large-scale, federally funded preserva-
tion microfilming projects that are in-
creasingly a feature of research libraries' 
preservation activities. A look at the 
range of individual projects and efforts 

Book Reviews 185 

by various consortia with their various 
administrative possibilities might have 
provided a useful backdrop to De Pew's 
detailed discussion of numerous preser-
vation techniques. As it develops, the 
field of preservation is moving beyond a 
concern for techniques alone to a con-
scious focus on strategy, and this shift 
should receive some attention in a hand-
book that claims to survey the literature. 

The omission of this aspect of the 
national perspective is mirrored in a ser-
ies of omissions in detail. The list of preser-
vation services neglects some major 
funding agencies like the National Li-
brary of Medicine, and prominent mi-
crofilmers like Research Publications 
and Micrographic Systems of Connec-
ticut, both of which do contract work for 
major preservation projects. In spite of 
detailed treatment of the deacidification 
process, the book does not include Akzo 
Chemicals, the firm that holds the patent 
on the DEZ process favored by the Li-
brary of Congress. 

In sum, the handbook is a highly 
detailed discussion of certain preserva-
tion techniques without serious considera-
tion of the institutional and national 
context in which those techniques are de-
ployed. This flaw makes this work, 
while generally informative, less than a 
fully satisfying overview for college and 
research librarians.-Susanne F. 
Roberts, Yale University, New Haven, 
Connecticut. 

Desktop Publishing in the University. 
Ed. by JoanN. Burstyn. Syracuse, N.Y.: 
Syracuse Univ. Pr., 1991. 137p. paper, 
$12.95 (ISBN 0-8156-8116-X). LC 91-
8759. 
Two and a half years ago, Syracuse 

University and the Association of Uni-
versity Presses sponsored a conference 
on ''The Impact of Desktop Publishing 
on University Life." At the time, this was 
a topic fraught with exciting possibilities 
and hopes, but also questions, doubts, 
and even fears. The same atmosphere of 
uncertainty surrounds the topic today. 
Only the terminology has changed: the 
almost quaint-sounding phrase desktop 
publishing has been replaced by terms