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 



newspaper files and public documents are 
included, but this is not a piece of research 
— i t is a survey of the Philadelphia book 
stock, and as such an interesting and 
provocative work for non-Philadelphians. 
—John VanMahj A.L.A. Fellow, Gradu-
ate Library School, University of Chicago. 

Review Index; a Quarterly Guide to Pro-
fessional Reviews for College and 
Reference Libraries. Edited by Louis 
Kaplan and Clarence S. Paine. Chicago, 
Follett Book Co., December 1940 to 
date. $3.50 per annum. 
I F , AS P O P E P U T S I T , "Index learning 

turns no student pale, yet holds the eel of 
science by the tail" the editors of the 
Review Index have done their profession 
a service in providing another grip on 
those elusive appraisals of current books 
which librarians seek for their own ad-
vantage and that of their patrons. 

I t is no substitute for the Book Review 
Digest because it gives no excerpts from 
reviews nor does it offer any symbols to 
indicate merit or the lack of it. F u r t h e r -
more, it is a straight author list with no 
entries under subject or title and a mini-
mum number of cross references.  I t gives 
the author's name in secondary fullness, a 
brief title, publisher, date, price, and, as a 
rule, a reference to one book review, al-
though occasionally a second or even a 
third is cited. 

W h i l e the Book Review Digest selects 
reviews of books more or less in the pub-
lic eye from approximately 80 periodicals 
and newspapers, the Review Index lists 
all of the reviews, with a very few excep-
tions, in about 60 journals of a scholarly 
kind, and covers nearly 400 more titles 
than the other index in a three months 
period. As might be expected, there is 
some overlapping. Of the items in a 

single column of the new index, 11 out of 
31 titles were covered in the Book Review 
Digest, while of the 19 reviews of books 
in the September, 1940, issue of the 
Geographical Journal, 8 were included in 
both places.  I t seems fair to conclude 
that the Review Index will provide each 
year critical information on about 1500 
more books than has been available in the 
past. 

O n e is struck by the absence of the 
foreign reviews which are so greatly de-
sired by research workers in certain fields. 
T h e Bibliographie der Rezenzionen, which 
will continue to appear, one hopes, covers 
the foreign field quite comprehensively but 
scholars and library staff shy away from 
it.  W e like our information to come 
more easily. In any case, it is non-
existent for the period covered by the 
Review Index. Foreign reviews are 
needed now as never before since personal 
communications with Europe have almost 
ceased. D u r i n g the latter part of 1940 
few periodicals were received from con-
tinental Europe. T h e y have begun to 
come again. Among important reviewing 
media seen during the past month have 
been: Beiblatt zur Anglia, Deutsche 
Rundschau, Zeitschrift fur Franzosische 
Sprache und Literatur and Nordisk Tid-
skrift, to mention but a few of many. 
Incidentally, an important foreign lan-
guage journal published in this hemisphere 
but omitted from the Review Index is 
Revista Iberoamericana which contains 
valuable signed reviews. Among English 
language periodicals there are several im-
portant ones which are missing but they 
will most probably be added as a demand 
for them arises. 

W h i l e one misses any subject approach 
to material it is undoubtedly true, as the 
editors explain in the preface to the first 

254 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES