College and Research Libraries


plain, get the thing done, let them howl." 
If, like Moses, Kirkland never did fully 
learn how to delegate authority he never-
theless seemed to learn with J o w e t t never 
to make the same mistake the second time. 
H e doubtless knew that one who occupies 
a college or university presidency in the 
United States holds an almost impossible 
post and is bound to make some mistakes; 
but the best that the best of such officers 
can hope for is to avoid making any 
but small mistakes.—Edgar TV. Knight, 
University of North Carolina, Chapel 
Hill. 

Too Much College, or Education Is Eat-
ing Up Life. . . . Stephen Leacock. 
Dodd, Mead, 1940. 255p. $2. 
" E D U C A T I O N is eating up life" is the 

theme of this, Stephen Leacock's latest 
humorous sally against the windmills of 
formal education.  W e spend too much 
time and money, he claims, and too much 
of our valuable youth, acquiring the di-
plomas—the formal insignia of modern 
education—and too little preparation for 
the real work of life. By making us 
laugh, he makes us listen, using half-truths 
in argument for, as he says, "a half-truth 
—like a half brick, carries better." 

Economics, asserts Leacock, is a mass 
of technical verbiage; psychology, "the 
black a r t , " a parasite battening upon phi-
losophy, art, and science; the educational 
value of Latin is overlooked; teaching of 
foreign languages is a f a r c e ; modern Eng-
lish spelling is illogical; mathematics, a 
series of "puzzles" bearing little relation 
to reality. 

Although he laughs as he talks, we 
know that this keen, kindly jokester is 
a friendly critic who might well be taken 
seriously.—Morris A. Gelfand, Queens 
College Library, Flushing, N.Y. 

The Acquisition and Cataloging of Books; 
Papers Presented before the Library In-
stitute at the University of Chicago, 
July 29 to August 9, 194.0. Edited by 
William  M . Randall, with an introduc-
tion by Louis  R . Wilson. T h e Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1940. ( T h e 
University of Chicago Studies in Li-
brary Science) x, 4o8p. $2.50. 
T H E R E A S O N S for the decision to de-

vote the 1940 Library Institute, the fifth 
annual institute sponsored by the G r a d u -
ate Library School of the University of 
Chicago with the financial assistance of 
the Carnegie Corporation of N e w York, to 
the subject of the acquisition and catalog-
ing of books—the so-called "technical 
processes"—are enumerated by Dean Louis 
R. Wilson in his introduction to this col-
lection of the papers presented at the 
institute.  I n the case of the acquisition 
process there are four reasons: ( 1 ) the 
present war and the rising importance of 
America as the preserver of the records of 
civilization, ( 2 ) the reduction of library 
budgets with little prospect of any great 
increase in the immediate future, ( 3 ) the 
growing realization of the necessity of co-
operative acquisition programs and division 
of fields between libraries, and ( 4 ) the 
recent spectacular developments in micro-
photography.  I n the case of classification 
and cataloging, there are likewise four 
reasons for the decision: ( 1 ) the lack of 
funds, ( 2 ) the shift of interest from cata-
loging as an end in itself to cataloging as 
a service, ( 3 ) the growth of union catalogs 
and bibliographical centers, and ( 4 ) the 
new developments in photography as ap-
plied to library records. 

T h e papers themselves, numbering 
seventeen in all, have been edited by P r o f . 
William  M . Randall, w h o is also the 
author of the opening paper on the tech-

JUNE, 1941 251 



nical processes in general and their sig-
nificance in relation to other library func-
tions. Since the conception of a library 
has changed, or at least is changing, from 
that of a collection of books to that of a 
service agency, it is clearly in order to re-
examine and re-evaluate the technical 
processes, "the secrets of the c r a f t , " in 
terms of this changing conception. 

Among the authors of the following 
papers we meet both leaders in the library 
profession and recognized authorities in 
special fields. T h e i r papers cover every 
important phase of the processes of acqui-
sition and cataloging and amply justify 
the title of the volume.  T o comment on 
each paper individually is impossible here ; 
mention can be made of only three or four 
that distinguish themselves in one respect 
or another. 

D r . W i l l i a m  W . Bishop begins by 
emphasizing the responsibility for collect-
ing and preserving research materials that 
American libraries must assume in a new 
sense now that the very existence of 
European libraries is threatened.  H e then 
continues with a comprehensive and de-
finitive enumeration of the specific ma-
terials or types of material that constitute 
a research collection, and a survey of the 
extent to which these materials are now 
available in American libraries, and closes 
finally with an illuminating answer to the 
question, " W h a t may an American scholar 
of 1970 confidently expect in the way of 
service of the materials for research?" 

D r . A. F. Kuhlman outlines with clar-
ity and thoroughness the essential processes 
in the handling of serial and government 
publications, an outline that might well 
serve as a practical working guide for 
serials and documents departments. D r . 
Robert R. M i l l e r stresses again the need 
for more and more precise cost measure-

ment of the technical processes but also 
reminds us that unit costs, once they are 
accurately determined, do not answer our 
many questions of management, policy, 
and practice; they raise them. 

In the concluding paper M a r g a r e t 
M a n n quite appropriately discusses the 
teaching of the technical processes, with 
special reference to cataloging. J u s t as 
catalogers and administrators have recog-
nized the coming of the machine age to the 
cataloging department in the form of the 
typewriter, duplicating devices, photo-
graphic methods, cooperative cataloging, 
etc., so it is equally if not more important 
that teachers of cataloging should recog-
nize these developments, and even antici-
pate those that lie ahead of us in the 
f u t u r e . 

Credit is certainly due those who 
planned an institute of such comprehen-
sive scope and the writers who have 
treated their respective topics in such a 
thorough and able manner.  T o find fault 
with what is said would be difficult, but to 
say this is in itself a rather serious criti-
cism. T h e general effect of the volume 
is a good deal that of a text book—a 
rather conservative text book. Could not 
those whose professional background and 
interests move them to spend their time 
and money to attend the institute or to 
read the published papers be trusted with 
something more original and inspiring 
than, for the most part, they have here? 
W o u l d it not here seem less essential that 
the speaker or writer should present a 
sound and accurate, not to say elementary, 
analysis of his topic than that he should 
present new ideas, even radical ideas, and 
leave his hearers stimulated, with an oc-
casional one shocked ? T h e r e is, of course, 
always the danger of being misunderstood 
or taken too seriously, but there are cer-

252 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



tainly times when that risk is worth run-
ning.—John J. Lund, Duke University 
Library. 

Philadelphia Libraries and Their Hold-
ings; Data Compiled as Part of a Re-
port on Philadelphia Libraries to the 
Carnegie Corporation of New York. 
Bibliographical Planning Committee of 
Philadelphia. University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1941. pi., 46p. 50^. 
T H E TOOLS of library cooperation are of 

two kinds, the line-and-reel variety and 
the net. If you are after one book at a 
time, the union catalog, Union List of 
Serials, or catalog of a library or a collec-
tion may land it for you. If, on the other 
hand, you seek all or much of the informa-
tion on some topic, the mesh of any de-
scription of library resources is likely to 
seem too fine or too coarse. Moreover, 
with this sort of purpose you are apt to 
need the aid of someone skilled in tracking 
through the ramifications of print to the 
sources you require and consequently may 
find that a printed guide to library re-
sources omits an essential factor of the 
bibliographical process, the names of li-
brarians or experts w h o know how to 
manipulate the literature in your field. 
Descriptions of resources are a poor sub-
stitute for the organization of staff and 
book stock resources of the nation as a 
whole or of one of its subdivisions; but 
they are nevertheless a substitute which, in 
the hands of a resourceful librarian or a 
pertinacious student, will in the end help 
to connect print with the client. 

T h e Bibliographical Planning Commit-
tee has compiled this list of special collec-
tions and fields of specialization primarily 
as a guide for library planning, and has 
published it as a reference tool for li-
brarians in Philadelphia and elsewhere. 

Since the list is a summary of the com-
mittee's resources-information file (mainly 
supplied by the libraries described), this 
particular list is not a substitute for a 
bibliographical center, since the commit-
tee is at present organizing one, but is 
one of the center's tools in handy form. 
As such, it gives librarians and scholars 
outside Philadelphia a rapid but not hasty 
survey of the Philadelphia library-stock 
situation. T h e major portion of the 
pamphlet contains abstracts of the de-
scriptions on file arranged by broad classes. 
T h i s arrangement, though not novel to 
this type of publication as the introduction 
claims, is obviously a good one for plan-
ning, since it shows gaps in subject fields 
which are covered, thinly presumably, only 
by general collections, and shows points of 
concentration at which the checking of 
bibliographies would indicate the need for 
coordinated purchasing. T h e abstracts are 
concise, seldom quantitative, occasionally 
vague, but their references to published 
inventories and catalogs, and the fact that 
more information is on file, make the list 
a useful tool for directing searchers in 
Philadelphia, a useful addition to the scat-
tered resources-literature of the country at 
large. T h i s section is a portrait—and a 
handsome one!—of Philadelphia library 
resources. 

T h e rest of the pamphlet consists of 
recent (apparently 1939) book stock and 
expenditure figures for 31 libraries and 
departments; a chronology of Philadelphia 
libraries to 1900; and a classified list by 
subject specialization of libraries and de-
partments. A good deal of hard clerical 
work has gone into the whole compilation, 
and in some places excellent professional 
work, such as the list of document collec-
tions; there are one or two oversights, 
such as the omission of periodicals while 

JUNE, 1941 253