College and Research Libraries By LAWRENCE S. THOMPSON Recent Foreign Books on the Graphic Arts, Bibliography, and Library Science Y U G O S L A V L I B R A R I E S Klaus-Detlev Grothusen. Die Entwick- iung der wissenschaftlichen Bibliothe- ken Jugoslawiens seit 1945. Cologne, Greven Verlag, 1958. 176p. ('Arbeiten aus dem Bibliothekar-Lehrinstitut des Landes NArdrhein-Westfalen," no. 14.) T h e great Yugoslav encyclopedia gives, under various entries, full information about the libraries of Yugoslavia, but here we have a compact, detailed, and up-to-date account of the scholarly libraries of Yugoslavia in a single volume. I n 1957 Guido Manzini, di- rector of the Biblioteca Governativa in Gorizia, wrote a pleasing little travel ac- count of his visits to Yugoslav libraries that appear as no. 2 in the series of "Sol- lecitazioni," but Grothusen's book gives a great deal more factual information. T h e German writer provides historical, statistical, and critical details that will be invaluable to bibliographers, library historians, and Sla- vicists. His work covers the entire country, and he is able to present i n broad outline the major tendencies of modern Yugoslav librarianship. Similar works on other smaller eastern European countries would be wel- come additions to library literature. C Z E C H M O N A S T I C L I B R A R Y Vladislav Dokoupil. Soupis rukopisu knihovny augustinianu na St. Brne. Briinn, Statni pedagogicke nakladel- stvi, 1957. 142p. T h e University of Briinn Library acquired the responsibility of supervising a number of monastic libraries that became public prop- erty after W o r l d W a r I I . Vladislav Dokoupil, Dr. Thompson is Director, University of Kentucky Libraries. director of the division of manuscripts and older books at Briinn, was assigned the job of making these treasures better known to the world of scholarship. H e prepared sev- eral processed catalogs, and this is the first printed catalog in the series. T h e Augustinian Library i n Briinn goes back to the fourteenth century, and it has survived the vicissitudes of the turbulent political history of Bohemia in relatively good condition. Its total holdings now amount to some twenty-six thousand pieces. T h e present catalog describes 135 man- uscripts. (An earlier catalog by Pazderka recorded only 119.) Aside from its value for describing important source materials, it is useful as the picture of a typical monastic collection. D E U T S C H E S T A A T S B I B L I O T H E K Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. Zehn- Jahresbericht der Deutschen Staats- bibliothek, 1946-1955. Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, 1956. 237p. T h e decennial report of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, the torso of the old Preus- sische Staatsbibliothek left in Berlin, is a document to stir up mixed emotions. T h e valiant efforts of East German librarians to maintain a high level of acquisition policy and high standards of service in a famous old library are admirable. M u c h the same might be said, however, of the work of the West- deutsche Bibliothek in Marburg, where most of the former collections of music, man- uscripts, orientalia, and maps are housed. T h e administrative skill of the super- visors of the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in dealing with their handicaps has been ex- emplary, and this report contains many a basic lesson in library management. Never- theless, a big question mark still exists in the minds of librarians and scholars every- MAY 1959 247 where about the present arrangements, and it will be erased only when Marburg comes to Unter den Linden. H U N G A R I A N M A N U A L O F L I B R A R I A N S H I P Sallai Istvan and Sebestyen Geza. A Konyvtaras Kezikdnyve. Budapest, Miivelt Nep, 1956, 576p. Although this general manual of li- brarianship is primarily aimed at medium- sized and smaller libraries, it is nevertheless significant for the light it throws on H u n - garian library practice. T h e various sections discuss the history of books and libraries, acquisition, cataloging, use of collections, reference work, departmentalization, admin- istration, and the structure of the Hungarian system. T h e latter chapter is perhaps the most valuable one in the book for outsiders. There is extensive documentation, with references to the library literature of the USSR as well as to that of western countries. T h e authors occasionally betray a lack of familiarity with foreign library traditions, but it is surprising that they do not make serious errors in this field in view of Hungary's virtual isolation from most coun- tries for almost two decades. O R I E N T A L I A IN M U N I C H Herbert Franke, ed. Orientalisches aus Miinchener Bibliotheken und Samm- lungen. Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Ver- lag, 1957. 87p. T h e extraordinary wealth of the Bay- erische Staatsbibliothek in Orientalia has been described in three essays for the Twenty-fourth Congress of Orientalists in Munich (August 28-September 4, 1957). Hans Streidl outlines the history of the Hebraica; Franz Joseph Neier describes the Asia Major Collections (mainly Sinica); and Hermann Bojer deals with the printed Arabica. A fourth richly illustrated article by Roger G. Goepper deals with the Asiatic collections in the Staatliches Museum fiir Volkerkunde. Most interesting, perhaps, is the noble collection of Hebraica, with some 400 man- uscripts and 3,000 printed books. T h e latter collection suffered gravely as the result of allied bombardments in W o r l d W a r I I , but the manuscripts escaped. Still the collection ranks even today with the finest in any of the world's great libraries. T h e Sinica of the Staatsbibliothek will offer a solid and prac- tical basis for research in any aspect of far eastern culture, although it is somewhat poorer in rare material than the Jewish col- lections. T h e collection of printed Arabica begins with so rare a work as Pedro de Al- cala's Arte para ligeramente saber la lengua arabica (Granada, 1505) and includes many other scarce works printed in Europe, Asia, and Africa. T h e volume is richly illustrated, and it will provide equal pleasure to orientalists and to bibliologists in general. J A P A N E S E B I B L I O G R A P H Y Sekai no shoshi-ten jikai. Mokuroku to kaisetsu. Tokyo, Kokuritsu toshokan, 1957. 72p. I n 1954 the Japanese National Diet Li- brary issued an extensive catalog on Japa- nese studies by foreigners in which biblio- graphical contributions received detailed at- tention. T h e present catalog describes an exhibit on bibliography and was issued for delegates from India and the Pacific coun- tries to a conference in Tokyo on 1-7 Novem- ber 1957. While the national bibliographies of Europe and Asia receive appropriate at- tention, major emphasis is placed on Japan. T h e Japanese section begins with Dengyo Daishi's catalog of Buddhistic works in the ninth century and extends through the end of the M e i j i period in 1868 to the current bibliographies. Item 176 is the bibliography issued since 1951 by the National Diet Li- brary, Zen-nihon shuppan-butsu so-mokuro- ku. Appropriate attention is also given to subject bibliographies. This catalog is a val- uable guide to a bibliographical tradition that is not as well known as it should be in this country, and it would be useful in translation. C E N S O R S H I P Karl-Erik Lundevall, ed. Forbjudna bocker och nordisk debatt om tryck- jrichet och sedlighet. Stockholm. Wahl- strom och Widstrand, 1958. 324p. I n the winter of 1957/58 Karl-Erik Lun- devall and seven collaborators conducted a 248 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES radio series on freedom of the press and morality. Books such as the Decamerone, Candidee, Les fieurs du mal, The Origin of Species, Ulysses, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and All Quiet on the Western Front are ex- amined in individual essays. I n the second part of the work, about equal in length to the first part, Lundevall discusses certain celebrated cases of Scandinavian books ac- cused of being pornographic and the de- sirability of legislation to control pornog- raphy. His reasoning is at all times dispas- sionate and objective, and he valiantly tries not to dismiss the censors as meddlesome bluenoses. Nevertheless, his position is basic- ally a liberal one; and his examinations of European problems in this field, above all in Scandinavia, are instructive and useful even for those not acquainted with these litera- tures. M E D I C A L B I B L I O G R A P H Y Medicinska enciklopedija. 2. Banj-Cul. Zagreb, Izdanje i Naklada Leksiko- grafskog Zavoda FNRJ, 1958. 703p. T h e articles on medical bibliography (pp. 40-50) by Mirko Drazen Grmek and on med- ical libraries (pp. 50-54) by Laroslav Glesing- er are well organized resumes of these sub- jects that bring out many points not likely to be found in all western European sources. T h e article on medical bibliography is his- torical and classified, in the latter section first bv subject and then by national jurisdiction. T h e article on medical libraries describes both general research libraries and special medical libraries. I n both articles the materi- al on Yugoslavia is, of course, quite detailed. From the bibliographical standpoint, the Yugoslav medical encyclopedia is especially valuable for the extensive historical material and rich illustration (including many fac- similes of title pages of important books). T H E R O M A N L E T T E R Frantisek Muzika. Krasne pismo ve vyvoji latinky. Prague, Statni Nakladelstvi krasne literatury, huclby a umeni, 1958. 2 v. This monumental history of the Roman letter dwarfs all other works in this field in terms of size; and the scope and detail will lend it a permanent value as a reference work despite the fact that it is in Czech. T h e wealth of illustrations will make it useful even for the elementary student of the his- tory of western European writing and print- ing. T h e first volume traces the development of the Roman letter through the beginning of letterpress printing. T h e second volume brings the story up to modern times. There is an index and a list of illustrations in each volume. Full attention is given to American developments. C O P Y - B O O K S Werner Doede. Bibliographic deutscher Schreibmeisterbiicher von Neuddrffer bis 1800. Hamburg, Dr. Ernst Haus- wedell & Co., 1958. 126p., 32p. of plates. Werner Doede's careful account of more than two hundred and fifty titles of German copy-books is a significant contribution to the literature of the history of calligraphy. H e includes in each entry an exact biblio- graphical description, variant points in in- dividual copies, a list of hands illustrated, and references to the critical literature. There is an extensive introduction which is somewhat short of the full-blown history of the German writing masters which we need but nevertheless a useful and infor- mative essay. There are thirty-two pages of plates, an index of names, and a list of li- braries for which locations are cited. Doede's bibliography begins with the famous Johann Neudorffer the Elder in 1519. T h e 250-odd titles in the list represent a good share of the some 800 copy-books estimated for Europe in general during the same period by Peter Jessen in his Meister der Schreibkunst aus drei Jahrhunderten. Thus Doede's work assumes major im- portance not only for Germany but for the general history of calligraphy as well. G E R M A N W R I T I N G M A S T E R Wolfgang Fugger. Wolfgang Fuggers Schreibbilchlein. Vollstanclige Faksi- mile-Ausgabe des 1553 in Niirnberg MAY 1959 249 erschienenen Werkes. Mit einer Ein- leitung von Fritz Funke. Leipzig, VEB Otto Harrassowitz, 1958. xv, 207p. I n 1956 the Institut fur Buchgestaltung an der Hochschule fur Grafik and Buchkunst in Leipzig sponsored the publication of Albert Kapr's Johann Neuddrffer der Altere, der grosse Schreibmeister der deutschen Renais- sance, a richly illustrated work with forty- eight facsimiles from Neudorffer's work. A new contribution from this same institute is a complete facsimile of a work by one of Neudorffer's most competent pupils, Wolf- gang Fugger (1515-1568). Fugger seems to have been something of a wastrel, but his significant copy-book of 1553 has insured his fame. T h e work is a model of the genre and one of the best of the sixteenth century. I t in- troduces the art of writing by showing the instruments and the stance of the writer. T h e bulk of the text consists of descriptive notes on one side of the page and examples on the other. Four styles of cursive and offi- cial hands take up the first part of Fugger's work, and considerable detail is given to construction and variants of the Roman letter especially the capitals. Another section deals with the Greek alphabet, with a de- tailed list of abbreviations; and there is a section on Hebrew letters with examples of musical notation for Hebrew, the first in any copy-book. Fugger's copy-book is one of the most comprehensive of the sixteenth century, and it is full of vigor and individuality. I t could not have failed to have impressed the typographer, the composer, and the printer with its clarity and pedagogical effectiveness. Fritz Funke's short compact introduction is just about the right length to accompany a facsimile without detracting from the main show. T h e facsimile, assembled from three different copies in the Deutsches Buch -und Schriftmuseum of the Deutsche Biicherei, is probably more legible than any existing single copy. H A N D W R I T I N G F. Wintermantel. Bibliographia grapho- logica. Stuttgart, Ruhle-Diebener Ver- lag, 1958. 182p. Although Wintermantel places special em- phasis on the physiological and psychological aspects of the study of handwriting, his work is also valuable for the literary student. Among the 1,608 references are a good many with historical implications, direct and in- direct. Moreover, there are numerous refer- ences to peripheral subjects such as restora- tion of mutilated or faded documents, photo- graphic problems, forgery, and shorthand which can be of greatest value to the man- uscript librarian. T h e arrangement is by author, but there is a subject index. There is also a list of six graphological journals, five in German and one in French. B O O K S E L L E R ' S M A N U A L Harry Fauth and Wolfgang Lehmann. Taschenbuch des Buchhandlers. Leip- zig, Verlag fur Buch- und Bibliothek- swesen, 1958. 180p. This valuable little manual for book- sellers deserves some attention from li- brarians as well. I t offers many insights into contemporary practices of the European book trade that are not likely to come to the average librarian either through train- ing or through experience. T h e various proc- esses of editing and publication are de- scribed in detail, and there is a list of East German publishers. G O T H I C B I N D I N G S Ernst Kyriss. Verzierte gotische Ein- bande im alten deutschen Sprachge- biet. 3. Tafelband. Stuttgart, Max Hettler Verlag, 1958. 157p. T h e concluding volume in Kyriss' great work on Gothic bindings reproduces fifty- four bindings and 533 stamps out of 1,573 (for 3,065 bindings) considered in this vol- ume, which covers bindings from un- identified shops. A n important aspect of this volume is the addenda, reporting in- vestigations subsequent to the first (text) volume. I t is a tribute to Kyriss' skill in his field that only three of the fifty-nine shops whose work is described in this volume have been identified in the last eight years. T h e complete work is an essential part of any reference collection not only in book history 250 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES but also in art and general cultural history. T h e publisher, M a x Hettler, has done an immense service to scholarship by bringing out an expensive work of this sort with a comparatively small market. Few, if any, commercial publishers or university presses i n the U n i t e d States would have undertaken a work of this type without a major subsidy. Fifty Golden Years "On the evening of January 16, Dr. and Mrs. Charles H. Brown held a small din- ner party in Gainesville, Florida, in observance of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. "One can be certain that many tender memories came flooding back to them with heart-warming vividness on that occasion. In the presence of guests and congratu- latory messages, they undoubtedly looked back on a half-century of devotion and ac- complishment which neither one would change in any respect if given the opportunity. "During the past thirty-six years the college town of Ames, Iowa, has been their home. It has been here, within sight and sound of the Campanile, that their two gifted sons, both eminent men in their respective professions, were reared. "Of particular interest in these pages, naturally, is Dr. Brown's splendid record of achievement during the years when he directed the destinies of the Iowa State College Library. "When he arrived on campus in 1922, he found the library located in cramped and thoroughly unsatisfactory quarters in Beardshear Hall, but with plans underway for the building in which it is now located. " T h e book collections, then numbering approximately 100,000 volumes, were es- pecially to feel the impact of his skillful competence in cooperation with key subject specialists among the faculty. "Dr. Brown could not have been brought to the campus at a more opportune time. Still largely an undergraduate college of agriculture and mechanic arts, the in- stitution was on the threshold of developments in graduate study and research which were to play a major role in transforming it into one of the major land-grant universities of the nation. "On reporting for duty, Dr. Brown at once set about to acquire scientific and technical periodicals and other serials from world-wide sources. Stress was placed on publications in the basic and applied fields of the physical and biological sciences, as well as in other areas of importance in the programs of the college. "At the time of Dr. Brown's retirement from administrative duties in 1946, the 365,000 volumes in the library were nationally recognized as being one of the major collections of serial literature in the research libraries of the country in the subject fields represented. "Nor do his labors thus far mentioned constitute his only notable contributions. T o these should be added the establishment of library services, many of them unique at the time, and his endeavors in behalf of community improvement. "Those who know and admire Dr. Brown, and their number is legion, are not at all surprised that he is today more keenly interested in professional matters and world affairs than many men half his age."—Robert W. Orr, in The Library at Iowa State XIII (1959), 40-41. MAY 1959 251