College and Research Libraries


142 I College & Research Libraries • March, 1967 

The book is good, old-fashioned, .. bat-
tles-and-kings" history, and as such it suc-
ceeds. Everyone who was anyone, every 
storied incident, every colorful imprint in 
the industry's 150-year lore is arrayed be-
fore us in full panoply. Here is truly a 
"Field of the Cloth of Gold." If its other-
wise felicitous prose becomes weighted 
down on occasion by distended catalogs of 
escutcheons and crests, it must be remem-
bered that chroniclers have had it ever 
thus. The thirteenth book of Holy Writ, 
essential though it may be, has remained 
unreadable for three millenia, and the ge-
nealogies of King Alfred of necessity read 
like a laundry list. 

The present book's main thrust, because 
of its comprehensiveness, will probably be 
as a reference work, although its value as 
such will no doubt be reduced by the fact 
that its index, despite its twenty-one pages, 
is not as detailed as some might wish. In 
using the book for reference it must also be 
borne in mind that surveys of the American 
publishing industry draw heavily from 
remm1scences, memoirs, garrulities, and 
biased company histories-all of which are 
notoriously irresponsible historical accounts 
-and that such surveys themselves are 
therefore replete with factual inaccuracies. 
Scholarly, dispassionate, primary research 
into the many specific aspects of the indus-
try has not yet been accomplished in ade-
quate quantity to permit the writing of an 
essentially correct secondary survey. 

Yet the author has done quite well by 
the sources available to him. His bibliogra-
phy includes sixty-seven entries-most of 
them books-and the text makes clear that 
he has read, assimilated, and utilized them 
all. One would perhaps wish that he had 
made greater use of the periodical litera-
ture; sometimes more factually accurate 
accounting of details can be found therein. 
He may be partially excused for not doing 
so, however, by the lack of a good bibli-
ography of American publishing, which 
makes the whole area a veritable jungle for 
the researcher who would work there. Gen-
erally, Madison's research will be consid-
ered reasonably adequate. 

Documentation is abysmally absent. The 
scholarly world finds absolutely bafHing the 
reluctance of many commercial publishers 
to document quotations in their books, and 

the present volume is an excellent exem-
plar. There are numerous tantalizing quo-
tations, such as .. 'the houses controlled by 
trade courtesy invariably endeavored to 
meet all trade friction on the highest plane 
of equity'" (p. 64), which are dutifully 
ensconced within double apostrophies but 
with no indication whence they were 
plucked. To pursue these thoughts further 
with their original authors, the reader has 
no recourse but to browse page-by-page 
through the sixty-seven tomes enumerated 
at the back of the book. Is this not a waste-
ful dereliction of scholarly responsibility? 

On balance, however, this is a good and 
useful book. All medium-sized and large 
libraries will doubtless want it, as will indi-
viduals interested in the rise and develop-
ment of this major American industry.-
D.K. 

The Library in Colleges of Commerce 
and Technology. By G. H. Wright. New 
York: London House & Maxwell, 1966. 
175p. $5.95. (66-21410). 

The need for this book lies in the very 
existence of the institutions which figure in 
the title. The whole area under discussion 
is a very peculiarly British affair and some-
thing should be said to put it into some 
frame of reference. 

The majority of British children leave 
school, and so finish with compulsory edu-
cation, at the age of fifteen. The minority 
remaining continue for another two or three 
years, and of that minority a small percent-
age will go on to the universities. This 
structure is always in a state of flux, and a 
generalization can be dangerous but, broad-
ly speaking, it is this situation which has 
created the pattern described in this book. 

Of the fifteen-year-old school-leavers, 
many-probably not a majority-will con-
tinue with some kind of vocational training. 
Much of this will be on a part-time basis 
conducted in the colleges of commerce and 
technology. For the most part courses will 
be in essentially practical areas of training 
and education, such as craft courses for en-
gineers, builders, plumbers, and so on; 
there also will be courses in commercial 
and secretarial fields. 

The position of the library and the librar-
ian vis-a-vis such students is a complex and 
a difficult one. To begin with , the schools 



from which the students have come are not, 
over the length and breadth of the country, 
at all well provided with school libraries, 
and among them the qualified school librar-
ian is virtually unknown. The fact that the 
students did not pass beyond the · com-
pulsory schooling age of fifteen may par-
tially be attributed to their relatively low 
interest in reading. They have not in many 
instances been regular users of public li-
brary services. In other words, they come 
to the college with an inadequate back-
ground of library usage. Their success in 
their course work and their subsequent ca-
reer will, however, depend to some extent 
(however small) on their ability to utilize 
the college libraries. The library must also 
cooperate in the task of helping to fill some 
of the deficiencies in general education. 
This, at any rate, is a part of the act of 
faith which lay behind the postwar expan-
sion of libraries in such institutions. 

The authors of this composite work are, 
for the most part, actively engaged in this 
challenging, even if somewhat forlorn , area 
of librarianship. The chapters deal with the 
actual presentation of material for certain 
categories of student as well as the more 
vexing question of the role of the library as 
a liberalizing influence amid a welter of 
vocational courses. The book gives a clear 
idea of the problems which are being faced, 
and the enthusiasm of those engaged in the 
battle can easily be deduced.-Ray Stokes, 
Loughborough Technical College. 

Report on Project History Retrieval. 
Tests and Demonstrations of an Optic-
Coincidence System of Information Re-
trieval for Historic Materials. By Eliza-
beth In german Wood. Philadelphia: 
Drexel Institute of Technology, Graduate 
School of Library Science, c.1966 
(Drexel Library School Series Number 
14). xiii, 123p. $3. (66-21944). 

Mrs. Wood's book is a description of a 
system of information retrieval called optic-
coincidence. In brief, the system works in 
this manner. Each item, document, book, 
print, or what have you, is described on an 
index form by author, title, and/or other 
appropriate entries. Each item is numbered. 
Characteristics, or descriptors, akin to sub-
ject headings, which best fit the piece at 
hand, are chosen from a master list. A 

Book Reviews I 143 

gridded card for each characteristic is made 
and a hole is drilled in it at the coordinates 
which indicate the serial number of each 
item having this description. Finally, the 
user selects term cards which best describe 
the questions he has in mind, piles them 
together and shines a light through the lot. 
The places where the light comes through 
indicates the serial numbers of items in the 
collection which fill the reader's require-
ments. The reader then goes to the num-
bered index forms, as provided by the grid 
coordinates, and compiles a list of mate-
rials he wishes to use in the depository. 
Each term card, measuring about 8" x 10", 
has locations for 10,000 numbers; thus, as 
many as 10,000 items can be recorded on 
each term card. 

Mrs. Wood is using this system with suc-
cess at her own operation, the Joseph 
Drexel Institute, and the Copeland-Audelot 
at the Henry Francis DuPont Winterthur 
museum. With the help of that institution, 
Drexel Institute and the Copeland-Audelot 
Foundation, she explored the possibilities 
of the system in collections at the Library 
Company of Philadelphia (books); the 
Delaware state archives (governmental ar-
chives) ; the New York Historical Society 
(miscellaneous personal manuscripts); Eleu-
therian Mills historical library (family pa-
pers) ; Archives of American Art (large 
quantities of microfilmed papers) ; Virginia 
colonial records project (microfilmed official 
records) ; the Lewis-Walpole collection of 
eighteenth century English prints; Smith-
sonian Institution (silver objects); Winter-
thur museum (furniture) ; and finally, an 
amalgamation of all nine samples into a 
union index. 

Mrs. Wood reported her conclusions to a 
conclave held in Philadelphia in the spring 
of 1966. As one of the participants at that 
meeting, this reviewer came away with the 
opinion that this system probably was not 
suited to large collections of materials. Mrs. 
Wood, in her published report, tends to 
agree. Had her samples, which were limited 
to relatively small numbers of items in each 
of the nine institutions, been larger, it 
might have been possible to show that these 
fears were unfounded. 

Be that as it may, it appears that Mrs. 
Wood has proved that the optic-coincidence 
system of indexing materials in a relatively