College and Research Libraries


adds substantially to those existing in the 
field in the following ways: 

1. The information storage and retrieval . 
field is viewed broadly-going beyond the 
traditional libr~ry and even beyond the 
specialized information or documentation 
center. Rather, the information that is 
considered covers . the broad spectrum, 
ranging from numerical to nonnumerical 
information; the systems considered range 
from the manual to the computer-ori-
ented. 

2. The organization of the field is pleasing: 
starting with fundamental filing problems; 
continuing with organization of informa-
tion; then on to coding (called "the in-
.dexing shorthand"); going on to machine 
language representation; punched card 
systems; computer systems; and finally to 
microfilm and image handling equipment. 

The book is interspersed with cost esti-
mates and practical words of caution. The 
author has obviously made a special attempt 
to illustrate the book exhaustively, since 
there are no less than ·1 7 6 figures and 23 
tables in the numbered sequences, and more 
of them unnumbered. Their production is 
rather uniformly good. 

From rags to riches is the situation we 
now have with regard to textbooks in the 
information storage and retrieval field. Only 
eighteen months ago there were none, and 
now there are three. Of course, there are 
overlaps, but not unhealthy ones. The in-
structor who now wishes to use a text for an 
introductory course in the information sci-
ences can use parts of each text, or he can 
follow closely any one of them.-Allen 
Kent, University of Pittsburgh. 

The Place of a Research Library in a Lib-
er~l Arts College, Proceedings of a 
Symposium Held at Bowdoin College, 
February 21-22, 1963. Brunswick, Maine: 
Bowdoin College, 1963. 84p. $2. ( 63-
25194). 

The achievements of the brilliantly con-
ceived and admirably carried out Bowdoin 
College conference on The Place of Re-
search in a Liberal Arts College held in 
February 1963 are now available to a wider 
audience. Frederick Wagman, graduate of a 
liberal arts college and the director of a 

230 

large university library, was in an excellent 
position to make comparisons. He was fret-
ful about junior colleges and the new "uni-
versities" with inadequate resources, to say 
nothing about faculty and student research 
needs. The task of selecting materials for 
a college library is more difficult than se-
lecting materials for a large university. Co-
ordination of the teaching and research pro-
grams is essential in both colleges and uni-
versities. Mr. Wagman suggested that the 
resources, staffs, and buildings have to be 
generous if the prestige colleges are to main-
tain their status in the years to come. 

The second speaker, Eileen Thornton, is 
responsible for directing the library of Ober-
lin, a prestige college. With smaller facul-
ties and a more compact curriculum, the 
college nevertheless has marked problems of 
recruitment and retention of faculty mem-
bers as specialized interests emerge that may . 
change the variety of materials demanded. 
The increased number of periodicals and 
serials required to support teaching pro-
grams and to meet faculty and student 
needs, means ever increasing budgets, staff, 
and buildings. Good basic collections plus 

. staff members prepared and able to identify 
suitable topics for student specialization are 
essential. An increase in independent work 
may reduce the faculty load but will in-
crease the library staff load and will affect li-
brary staff budgets. 

Bowdoin was represented among the 
speakers by Professor Athern Daggett, Pro-
fessor Emeritus Edward C. Kirkland, and 
Librarian Richard Harwell. They commend-
ed Bowdoin for its library resources as-
sembled over a long span of years. Mr. Har-
well suggested that faculty-library relations 
are a two-way street. Professor Kirkland 
reminded the conference that the library is 
a central fact larger than architectural 
terms but extending to basic policy, library 
staff, and faculty appointments, promotions, 
and replacements. What counts is students 
and professors at work together in class-
rooms and the library. 

The conference closed with an address 
by Verner W. Clapp, president of t~e Coun-
cil on Library Resources. He defined a re-
search library as a place in which one can 
go to the sources and trace a footnote back 
home. The possibility of assembling a mil-
lion-volume library in microform will not 



answer the problems, for even the largest li-
braries cannot hope to have everything. Fur-
ther technical advances in microreproduc-
tion were predicted, but such deterrents 
were noted as copyright infringement and 
the lack of a good hand reader by which 
the individual can read microprints. Mr. 
Clapp stated that the purpose of a research 
library in an undergraduate college is to 
bring into the educational process the de-
velopment of research attitudes. He warned, 
however, that while a selected undergradu-
ate library has great merit it may provide 
the user with the excuse for being lazy by 
being content with the best encyclopedias 
and the latest monographs. 

Lacking in the publication is a record of 
the discussions that must have taken place 
in the dining rooms and at informal get-
togethers. These may have been the most 
gratifying part of the program. They prob-
ably centered around resources, especially 
of periodicals, the quality of tl)e faculty 
and the library staff, and of buildings to 
provide room for the resources and users.-
Flora B. Ludington, Mount Holyoke Col-
lege. 

Phonograph Record Libraries: Their Or-
ganisation and Practise. Edited by Hen-
ry F ; J. Currall, for the International As-
sociation of Music Libraries. Hamden, 
Conn.: Archon Books, 1963. 182p. $5.50. 
(63-6033/MN). 

The ever-increasing number of phono-
graph record collections in public and aca-
demic libraries is slowly forcing out of the 
guardians of these collections a body of 
pertinent literature. The already-great need 
for such material grows daily while the 
material itself merely trickles out. Thus, it 
is quite an event when an entire book is 
devoted to the subject, as is the volume un-
der consideration here. · 

Produced under the aegis of the Inter-
national Association of Music Libraries, 
this series of essays by various authors is 
edited by Henry F. J. Curran, F.L.A., who 
has attempted to compile a book that will be 
helpful to established as well as to future 
record libraries. 

In addition to editing the volume, Mr. 
Currall contributed a chapter dealing with 
the establishment and maintenance of phon-
orecord libraries. Whiie conceding that some 

MAY 1964 

of the information found in this chapter will 
be of interest to a library considering the 
addition of a record collection to its present 
services, this reviewer found it to be far too 
detailed (his model record library collected 
£693 in fines and £37 for breakage in a 
given year) and too specific to have any 
great significance for a library with much 
more or less than a 25' x 15' space allotment 
(his minimum). 

Undoubtedly the most useful chapter for 
the record library already in operation is the 
one by Eric Cooper entitled "Technical 
Data and Information on Gramophone Rec-
ord Libraries." This presents a brief explana-
tion of the process of record manufacturing, 
followed by a detailed, illustrated discussion 
of the stylus. A short section dealing with 
amplification becomes somewhat too tech-
nical for the electrical layman ("In the con-
stant amplitude system the cutter displace-
ment is in proportion to the amplitude of 
the driving voltage. . . . ") and the chapter 
concludes with a helpful lecture on the gen-
eral care of records. Here is found one of 
the most fascinating statements in library 
literature: "To safeguard records, borrowers 
should be advised to use a diamond ·stylus 
with a tip radius of .007 in." 

What ought to be the most useful chapter, 
that on phonodisc cataloging procedures 
followed at the BBC, evolves quickly into a 
pedantic and elementary treatise written in 
high school textbook style ("If a person is 
going to perform any task, the first essential 
is that he has some knowledge and interest 
in the materials to be dealt with .... A per-
son who is not particularly interested can 
never make a success of anything.") . Al-
though the bare facts in this chapter are 
sometimes helpful and enlightening, the tone 
of delivery is such that many readers will be 
alienated immediately. The page and a half 
devoted to the preaching of ACCURACY! 
in cataloging, for instance, is surely un-
necessary here. 

Since the book is directed to a public 
library audience, much of its material will 
be of little interest and consequence to most 
readers of this journal. It lacks such desir-
able things as a comparative discussion of 
the pros and cons of various cataloging sys-
tems and only one of its 182 pages gives 
recognition to the existence of spoken word 
recordings. As an addition to a mass of 

231