reviews 102 College & Research Libraries January 1997 Foundation and held in October 1993. The resulting fifteen papers by a broad cross section of involved play- ers, from academicians to entrepre- neurs to governmental representa- tives, have been organized into three parts preceded by an introductory chap- ter, “Whose Knowledge, Whose Genes, Whose Rights,” which sets the tone and defines the terms. Part I, “Equity and Indigenous Rights,” includes six chap- ters that explore the varied philosophi- cal issues concerning the possible ex- tension of the Western/Northern con- cept of intellectual property rights to knowledge of biological resources. In Part II, “Conservation, Knowledge, Property,” the authors address ongo- ing efforts by specific, primarily private, organizations (e.g., Shaman Pharma- ceuticals Inc., Native Seeds/SEARCH) to implement the spirit of the Biodiversity Convention; five excellent case studies from different parts of the world are presented. The volume con- cludes with three chapters on “Policy Options and Alternatives,” which ad- dress specific legal avenues that are be- ing pursued by such entities as the Na- tional Cancer Institute and the Interna- tional Cooperative Biodiversity Groups Program (funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health), the U.S. National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. This very valuable collection of pa- pers serves to broaden the discussion of intellectual property rights to a truly international level and to place it firmly within the framework of the growing in- digenous rights movement. These dis- cussions bring a very useful interna- tional perspective to the issues of copy- right and patent as we encounter them in our electronic information world, which is primarily Western and North- ern in outlook and tradition—Joan Berman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. Wiegand, Wayne A. Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey. Chicago: ALA, 1996. 403p. $35. (ISBN 0-8389-0680-X.) This volume accords Dewey the biog- raphy he deserves—grounded on thor- ough research, clearly written, critical though appreciative, and enlightened by a sound sense of the cultural issues involved in its subject’s career. It will interest students of not only library his- tory but also general cultural develop- ments at the end of the nineteenth cen- tury. Americans concerned with books then confronted enormous problems. They somehow had to arrange system- atically the rapidly rising tide of volumes printed in the United States and abroad, and also make them accessible to a vastly expanding number of readers and borrowers. Whatever its other vir- tues, the Library of Congress did not function as a national library, and state, town, and municipal institutions each coped with the general difficulties by fol- lowing its own eccentric fashion. The most prestigious collections were private, assembled as at Harvard for instructional purposes or gathered as an avocation by one or several gentlemen—the Redwood at Newport, the Atheneum in Boston, or the Astor, ACRL 29, 55, 95 ARL 18 BIOSIS 68 Blackwell 58 EBSCO cover 2 Hoover Press 5 McGraw-Hill cover 3 Minolta 56-57 OCLC Online Computer 2, 96 PAIS 1 Todd Enterprises cover 4 H. W. Wilson 30 Index to advertisers Book Reviews 103 Lenox & Tilden in New York, for instance. Impelled by such scholars as Justin Winsor, the early custodians of such col- lections struggled to preserve, arrange, and catalogue the insistently growing holdings. The practices of older, often larger European institutions were not instructive. Some depended entirely on the memories or informal lists of de- voted empolyees; others simply stacked books by date of publication or accession; and still others devised unique systems, listed in big manuscript folios and only known or understood by the relatively few initiates. None, however, provided a useful precedent for the American libraries which hoped to serve a large miscella- neous body of readers. Ezra Abbot ex- perimented with cards of uniform size which he could arrange alphabetically in drawers or trays to form a file that could be expanded as needed, thus hop- ing to maintain a guide to holdings ac- cessible to any literate user. But this ini- tial step toward modernization left un- answered the question of how to ar- range the volumes. The situation challenged the ingenu- ity of Melvil Dewey, a product of upstate New York, not really a book person but what a later generation would call a “systems engineer.” Interested in effi- ciency, he became a crusader for sim- plified spelling and the metric system, both indicative of his impatience with traditional wasteful procedures. Before long, he also turned his attention to the chaotic state of book collecting which also offended his sense of efficiency. The decimal-based cataloging system he devised became the American stan- dard, welcomed in smaller libraries that lacked their own cataloguing staffs, es- pecially when joined to the cards de- vised by Abbot. Although subject to fre- quent modification and in many re- spects out of accord with evolving schol- arly needs, Dewey’s system continued to form the backbone of libraries in the United States. As important as his system were Dewey’s efforts to develop the profes- sional status of librarians, manifest in his work for the American Library As- sociation and in his services as director of the State Library of New York and as dean of the Columbia University library school. Like teaching (until almost the end of the nineteenth century), work as librarians seemed appropriate for women poorly paid and requiring little skill. Dewey, a skilled organizer and pro- moter, began to reverse those atti- tudes. Ironically, his troubles toward the end of his career stemmed from deficiencies in his own professional behavior. Embar- rassing charges surfaced of sexual harrassment, never made explicit and perhaps no more than incidental aspects of novel relationships of work that crossed traditional lines of gender. Charges of anti-Semitism were more readily substantiated, indeed never de- nied. Dewey owned a summer hotel on Lake George at which ALA frequently held retreats, and he openly refused to accept Jews as guests. Ultimately, these controversies led to his ouster from public positions, although his influence in library matters persisted.—Oscar Handlin, Harvard University. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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