College and Research Libraries 402 I College & Research Libraries • September 1965 College Teaching. By J. G. Umstattd. Wash- ington, D.C.: The University Press of Washington, D.C., 1964. v, 355p. $6. ( 64-24000) . For more than fifteen years Professor Um- stattd of the University of Texas has taught a course on problems of college teaching. He has drawn upon his experience in this course, upon his own varied background as a professor, and upon selected findings of research in writing a comprehensive volume on college teaching. The book has "three major divisions. The first considers the five basic problems of purpose, offering, the student, the free- dom of teacher and student, and motiva- tion. Part II defines and analyzes twenty- four general procedures and offers sugges- tions for their classroom use. The final di- vision treats the problems of the evaluation of teaching and learning, the college teach- er's part in counseling, and the practical considerations of qualification, compensa- tion, and advancement" (p. iv). It will be noted that this volume does not limit itself to what happens in the teaching-learning process. Also considered, for example, are the purposes and back- ground of higher education and the role, qualifications, and promotion of the college teacher. Nevertheless, the major contribu- tion of the book is made in that part which deals directly with teaching. Particularly valuable are the identification and discussion of twenty-four teaching pro- cedures which are classified under three headings: Procedures largely controlled by students -committee conference, debate, dramatiza- tion, forum, independent study, panel, oral student reports, and written reports. Procedures involving relatively more co- operation-case method, coaching, field trips, tutorial, unit system. Procedures mainly controlled by the teacher-anecdote, auditory aids, demon- stration, discussion, examinations, labora- tory, formal lecture, informal lecture, par- able, television, visual aids. The author admits and defends his "strong bias in favor of democratic processes in the classroom" (p. iv) on the basis of both psychological and philosophical ev- idence. He emphasizes "motivation as the basic essential for learning ( p. 112) and points out that the findings of psychologists reveal that effective motivation is encour- aged in the democratically operated class- room. Philosophically, he asserts that "in a culture the core of which is the demo- cratic concept of the rights and dignity of the individual, higher education in all its aspects must reflect that concept not only in theory but also and particularly in practice" (p. v). In reporting a survey of teaching meth- ods used by more thap eleven hundred faculty members in twenty-nine colleges and universities, the author points out that procedures "largely controlled by students" are used-at least occasionally-by many instructors. "The facts . . . give a negative reply to the critics of the college teacher who in- sist that the lecture is the only procedure in use and that the student has .no opportu- nity for expression. . . . This finding should lend security to the young instructor who is interested in sharing the responsibility for the teaching-learning process with his stu- dents" (p. 123). With the emphasis which this book gives to student responsibility for and control of learning, it would be anticipated that the role of the library in teaching would be highlighted. It is, therefore, disappointing to find consideration of "increased use of the library" (p. 210) restricted to a discus- sion of less than one page. All of the materials in this volume have, prior to publication, been used in the au- thor's course on college teaching. Accord- ingly the content · and organization of the book-including selected references for fur- ther study at the close of chapters-are well adapted for use in teaching. This publica- tion will also, however, have high value for college teachers and administrators, for students of higher education-and for li- brarians.-B. Lamar Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles. Encyclopedia Americana. International Edition. New York: Americana Corpora- tion, copyright 1965. 30 vols. (65-11857). Giving a fair opinion about a major gen- eral encyclopedia is one of the most dif- ficult tasks that can beset a reviewer. The overwhelming amount of material, and monstrous complexity of the editorial policy which lies behind the work, together with the realization that some people may take seriously what one says about what is a major investment (both on the part of the publisher and the purchaser) strongly sup- port a temptation to be vague and generally approbative. In the case of the Encyclopedia Amer- icana, one can say without any fear of con- tradiction that it is an excellent work. Physically it is very attractive, well bound, and printed on good, quite opaque paper with a very good choice of type and 16,991 fine illustrations (number supplied by the editors. Of these there are 9,414 black-and- white photos, 5,619 black-and-white draw- ings or diagrams , 718 four-color photos, 472 four-color drawings, 498 black-and- white maps and 270 in color.) The full set of thirty volumes contains about twenty-six thousand pages of approximately nine hun- dred words each, or somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-three million words. The words are arranged in sixty-nine thou- sand articles (counting only major titles) and are indexed in volume 30 by about three hundred and twenty-five thousand en- tries. Now that's all well and good, but such statistics do not tell the whole story. Mter all, timeliness and choice of material are equally important. General differences of emphasis and structure between encyclope- dias have been discussed before and are probably still valid. But many encyclope- dias emphasize their process of continuous revision (as mentioned in the article in this edition under "Encyclopedias" -a good, complete article, last revised apparently in 1949) and it seems that a check on this in the Americana might be a contribution. The older set used as comparison was copyright- ed in 1951. The editors inform me that "more than fifty-three thousand pages have been re- vised, rewritten or reset since 1950." This, of course, as they point out, is twice the number of pages in the set, so it needs explanation. There has been no complete resetting of type-the type page has been photographically enlarged by about 8 per cent so that the type is larger and clearer. But all of the change is based on textual change, and this seems to have been major. Many units as small as single words, dates, statistical figures , and parts of sentences have been changed. On the basis of two Book Reviews I 403 very small samples (word-for-word check of two twenty-five-page samples) about one- third of the text is totally rewritten or new material and much of the remaining two- thirds has been subject to small changes. In other cases many columns or . even pages are new. For example, two column inches on "States Rights" have become twenty-two; six columns on "Golf" have· be- come twelve; many new biographies are in- cluded; and, very admirably, a trend is noticeable toward the addition of the bib- liographies at the end of the articles. The articles on the centuries, of which the Amer- icana is justly proud, though once all writ- ten by James L. Walsh, are now all new and each by a scholar of that century. Fol- lowing the dictum that one picture is worth a thousand words, many articles have had pictures or diagrams added (a net gain of 6,241 since 1957, and many have been changed) . The new method of presenting visual material with the layers of trans- parencies has been used, for example, for "Anatomy of the human body" and "En- gine," with very good effect. About one thousand two hundred ninety of the illustra- tions are in color and for the most part, beautifully done. With regard to revision in a work this large, of course, exceptions can be found; the article on "Gold" contains "World Price" and "Recorded Reserves" figures only up to 1949; perhaps this is a patriotic effort to avoid national embarrassment. On the other hand, the article on Vietnam cites events through October 1964. As the work has grown by only about one thousand pages since 1951, obviously this new text implies an equal amount of old text omitted. The editors say, generally, "These decisions, as much as humanly pos- sible, are made on the basis of what the editors consider the facts and ideas most important to the largest number of people." For libraries, the types of deletions are of interest. For example, the old 311-page ar- ticle on World War I is now only 14 7 pages, but with three fine-print pages of bibliog- raphy citing extensive study sources. The article on World War II, 200 pages in 1951, is now 168 pages, but with new pictures and an extensive bibliography to 1961. This solution to space serves all purposes well. There is, however, also a noticeable trend toward the elimination of biographies pre- 404 I College & Research Libraries • September 1965 viously included, of authors, clerics, and scholars. Although they are all without ex- ception lesser known people, I would sug- gest that libraries might consider keeping old editions for reference value. A major improvement has been made in the style of the text. Although always quite well written, the Americana has made an obvious effort to rid itself of unnecessary stiffness or complexity. The new articles I read were uniformly better in these re- spects and much easier to read, while in- cluding more information. But style changes are not all; some ed- itors or authors apparently have had qualms about neat distinctions and decided to do something about them. For instance, the stopping of the Star of Bethlehem over J e- sus' manger formerly "must have existed in the imagination of the beholders"; now it "has been set down to poetic imagery." If one has to express an opinion, I suppose that's better. And we will all be happy to find that Lady Hester Stanhope is identified as an "English traveller," no longer as an "eccentric Englishwoman"-even if she was. Again, statistics cannot show the quality of the work. I personally am greatly im- pressed, almost overwhelmed, with what is obviously a major effort to make a fine en- cyclopedia finer. Many of the older articles will never need revision. And, as Amer- icana's luck would have it, type is probably being set now to correct those small short- comings noted. I think one cannot say more than that no general library can do without it.-G.A.H. A Directory of Information Resources in the United States. Physical Sciences. Biological Sciences. Engineering. U.S. Library of Congress. National Referral Center for Science and Technology. Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1964. iv, 352p. $2.25. (64-62809). This is a most useful bibliographic tool in the fields of science and engineering. It lists over a thousand organizations which . are actively operating as information pools in these fields. Museums, observations, in- dustrial organizations, professional and learned societies, academic research groups, government agencies and offices, informa- tion centers, special libraries, private re- search institutes, and many other institu- tions are included. Under each, the address and telephone number are given, followed by a descriptive section indicating the fields of interest of the institution, its borrowing, photocopy, and inter-library loan policies; consulting, translating, legal, literature searching, and similar services available; the languages covered by materials in its collections, as well as publications issued and their prices. The coverage includes books, journals, reports, documents, patents, maps, charts, films, data collections, photo- graphs, drawings, artifacts and special col- lections of many varieties. It is, in fact, an inventory of the widespread resources avail- able, but not necessarily known to be so heretofore, in a most convenient and usable form. The scope and purpose of each organiza- tion is given briefly, which should be very helpful in cases where a user is not sure whether he has found the best place to look for help. Full cross references are employed throughout the Directory. A subject index, comprising almost one- fourth of the total text, completes the Directory. Subject indexing terms are taken directly from the descriptions and "each re- source has been entered under the several subjects reported in the description of that resource in order to provide multiple ave- nues of approach." In the index, cross-refer- ences have been made from general to specific and among related terms. The index seems quite comprehensive, but with this type of reference book, there is no such thing as over-indexing. Anything that can be put into it can be used. The index does lack an entry for collections of translations. This, even more than translat- ing services (also not included) , would be most convenient to have because transla- tions are hard to locate. At the present time, for example, pre-war German work in rocketry, aeronautical engineering, and elec- trical engineering is in some demand. The SLA-John Crerar Translation Center does not have everything. The index term for translations should be broken down to in- clude such major divisions as German, Rus- sian, Japanese, and East European lan- guages. The identification of information re- sources is a continuing function of the Na- tional Referral Center for Science and Tech- nology. The first results are impressive and