College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 

Sound Building Advice 
Planning the College and University Library 

Buildings: A Book for Campus Planners 
and Architects. By Ralph E. Ellsworth. 
Boulder, Colo.: T h e Author, 1961. 102p. 
$5.00. 

Ralph Ellsworth has published a very use-
ful and timely book which should prove to 
be of considerable value to officials of col-
leges and universities who are planning new 
library buildings. And there are a great many 
new buildings now in the planning stage. 
This short book covers every facet of the 
planning process. It does not attempt to de-
scribe in detail all parts of a library building. 
Ellsworth has kept the various types of read-
ers in mind throughout. This includes li-
brarians who are familiar and those who are 
unfamiliar with library building planning 
problems. He has also kept constantly in 
mind architects of both types—those who 
have had library building experience and 
those who have not. Although he assumes 
nothing—or at last very little—on the part 
of the reader, he nevertheless manages not 
to offend the intelligence of the oriented. 

It is well written, and although Ellsworth 
claims that the book is a "personal" docu-
ment, he has remained extremely objective 
in nine-tenths of the book. 

Readers of reviews on library-building 
books may grow weary of being constantly 
reminded that Keyes Metcalf is working on 
a definitive book for college and university 
library buildings. Nevertheless, it is neces-
sary to bear this in mind; all of us (and this 
includes Ellsworth) should and do remain 
aware of that fact. T here are a lot of unan-
swered questions which we hope die Metcalf 
book will answer. It may be several years 
before that book is completed, but meanwhile 
there are millions of dollars worth of academic 
library structures which must be planned, 
and I am sure others will share my en-
thusiasm for Ellsworth's having gone ahead 
with this excellent publication, since it gives 
planners so much sound direction and ad-
vice. 

T h e author has a fine sense of what is 
generally accepted and what is an exception. 
This is most important, especially when the 
book is to be used by people without ex-
perience. He faithfully points out in each 
case what he considers an Ellsworth idea as 
compared to generally accepted practice. If 
he had not done this, the book could be dan-
gerous in that his own ideas on library opera-
tion and building might be assumed by the 
uninitiated to the standard practice. Some 
readers of course will want to adopt the ex-
ception, but they should know when they 
are doing s o . — W i l l i a m H. Jesse, University 
of Tennessee Library. 

T h e First Freedom 
The First Freedom: Liberty and Justice in 

the World of Books and Reading. Edited 
by Robert B. Downs. Chicago: ALA, 1960. 
xiii, 469p. $8.50. 

Robert B. Downs has brought together a 
fascinating and masterful anthology of recent 
writings on the censorship of books. T h e 
opening and closing sections present a broad 
definition of issues in the perspective of his-
tory and of the future. Other chapters pre-
sent the principal judicial opinions on the 
censorship of books, a variety of writings on 
private pressure groups, studies of the prob-
lem of defining obscenity, essays on political 
censorship, collections of statements by au-
thors and writers' groups and by librarians 
and library associations, a group of essays on 
the censorship of textbooks, and two illumi-
nating assemblages of writings on censorship 
in Ireland and under Fascism and Commu-
nism. 

T h e editor has chosen to confine his selec-
tions to British (including Irish) and Ameri-
can writings since 1900 and to those dealing 
specifically with the censorship of books. 
Within those limitations this search has been 
thorough and his selections admirable. Many 
of the selections are conveniently available 
nowhere else; all of them benefit from being 

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brought into association with each other and 
with Mr. Downs' stimulating and illuminat-
ing notes. Altogether it is an invaluable, in-
deed an indispensable collection. No other 
anthology approaches it in its field. 

One can regret that the limitations im-
posed by the editor exclude some earlier 
statements of basic principle, as in the writ-
ings of Milton, Williams, Jefferson, and Mill, 
but they are easily available elsewhere. A 
greater latitude in including writings, espe-
cially judicial opinions, relating to newspa-
pers and films and even comic books, when 
they are applicable in principle to books, 
would have permitted including opinions in 
such cases as Near v. Minnesota (a newspa-
per case establishing the "no prior restraint" 
principle), the Miracle and Lady Chatterley's 
Lover film cases, and the Winters case relat-
ing to comic books, all of which have had a 
significant l'ole in protecting the freedom of 
books. "Admittedly," says the editor, the 
book "has a bias, reflecting the liberal view, 
as contrasted to the advocates of censorship." 
This bias, which I wholly applaud, together 
with the paucity of intellectually respectable 
defenses of censorship, has led to the failure 
to include any vigorous advocacy of censor-
ship. Perhaps such advocacy has a place, even 
in a volume designed wholly to oppose cen-
sorship, if for no other reason than that there 
is hardly a better way to illumine the values 
of freedom than to allow a Comstock or a 
McCarthy or even a better-intentioned Post-
master General to advance the arguments for 
censorship. 

These are trifling additions to wish for, 
however, in view of the abundance afforded 
in Mr. Downs' generous selection. 

This volume is published by ALA, using 
the remainder of a grant from the Fund 
for the Republic that had supported the 
Freedom and Justice Awards. It is altogether 
fitting that ALA should be its publisher and 
Mr. Downs its editor. No professional associa-
tion in the United States has more clearly 
distinguished itself in the defense and en-
largement of the first freedom than ALA. 
And its struggle has been not only gallant, 
but also well-planned and successful. T h e 
ALA has not only fought battles for freedom; 
it has usually won them. T h a t this is true is 
in major part due to the courage and judg-
ment of Robert B. Downs. As president of 
the ALA during the McCarthy nightmare, as 

later chairman of the Intellectual Freedom 
Committee of that association, and now as 
editor of this volume, he has distinguished 
his procession as well as himself.—Dan Lacy, 
American Book Publishers Council. 

Cataloging Principles 
The Principles of Cataloguing. By L. Jolley, 

London: Crosby Lockwood & Son Ltd., 
1960. 147 p. 15s. 

This little volume is so timely that those 
librarians particularly concerned with cata-
log code revision might wish it had appeared 
a few months, or even years, earlier. This is 
not to imply that its interest is limited to a 
few catalogers or even to catalogers only. In 
spite of its being at times pedantic, most 
librarians would find something of value in 
The Principles of Cataloguing. It is well 
written, although some of the idioms and 
choice of words sound strange to the Ameri-
can ear. "Whilst" and "amongst" indicate 
that the author was not educated in America. 
Mr. Jolley is an Australian, writing at the 
University of Glasgow, where a "programme 
for the revision of the catalogue" became the 
source of this work. Mr. Jolley also acknowl-
edges his indebtedness to Charles A. Cutter, 
Seymour Lubetzky, and Andrew Osborn. In 
the preface, he says: "Cataloguing is one of 
those fields of human endeavor in which it 
may be safely assumed that if an idea is 
worth having, it will have occurred to more 
than one person." 

Unquestionably the prime importance of 
Mr. Jolley's study is his discussion of topics 
under scrutiny by the ALA Catalog Code Re-
vision Committee. T h e first chapter, " T h e 
Function of the Catalogue," presents one of 
the controversial topics to be discussed at 
the I F L A International Conference on Cata-
loguing Principles in October. He makes the 
statements, " T h e function of the catalogue 
is to interpret the library to the reader" and 
" T h e catalogue is an instrument of com-
munication" and then repeats a few pages 
later, " T h e object of the catalogue is to serve 
the needs of the reader" and " T h e catalogue 
is an extremely complex communication sys-
tem. It must therefore be based on existing 
habits." Throughout this chapter, he reiter-

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