College and Research Libraries


tion, Mr. Campbell points out that intelli-
gent planning dictates the · establishment of 
meaningful relationships among them. Each 
library comprises a segment of the total re-
sources of a community or metropolitan area 
and they should be available to all serious 
users on some kind of mutually agreeable 
basis. In several instances, the large public 
library in a metropolitan area is a special-
ized research collection as well as a source 
for popular recreational reading. At the 
other end of the scale, we see the need to 
reach the large segment of the population 
that does not use a library at all. Special 
approaches developed by many large public 
libraries, such as those in New York City 
and Los Angeles, need evaluation and 
further experimentation since this phenome-
non is apparently to be with us for some 
time. 

The book will be of interest to govern-
ment officials, educators, planners, librarians 
and others concerned with metropolitan 
problems. 

If there is any critical comment on the 
presentation, it may have to do with the 
fact that not enough emphasis has been 
placed on the role of the states (govern-
mental units between national and local 
levels) and national governments with re-
spect to metropolitan library planning. For 
example, the description of the Eastern 
Massachusetts Regional Public Library 
System makes no mention of the guiding 
and directing role of the Massachusetts 
Board of Library Commissioners and the 
Bureau of Library Extension in implement-
ing the state-supported plan for regional 
library service. States are and should be ex-
pected to participate financially and in 
planning to find solutions to metropolitan 
library problems. Federal and national 
governments must contribute further toward 
the staggering costs of municipal services, 
including libraries. Lasting solutions to the 
problem lie in the successful cooperative 
efforts of municipal, metropolitan, state, and 
national authorities. 

Mr. Campbell has paved the way with 
this information to further study of the 
situations and problems he describes so 
well. Let's hope that he and other authori-
ties continue to investigate and report to 
the profession.-John A. Humphry, New 
York State Education Department. 

Book Reviews I 447 

Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550. 
By Rudolph Hirsch. Wiesbaden: Otto 
Harrassowitz, 1967. 165p. 

This book is an important example of 
the complex and vital relationship which 
can exist between bibliographical scholar-
ship and the social and intellectual history 
of a period. Dr. Hirsch, who is associate 
librarian at the University of Pennsylvania, 
is to be admired for his labors and ap-
plauded for this contribution to our knowl-
edge and understanding of social and in-
tellectual developments not only during the 
first one hundred years of the mass-pro-
duced book but also of much of the subse-
quent history of printing, publishing, book-
selling, and the problems of literacy. 

Dr. Hirsch's own introductory note to 
his book is the best indication of the scope 
of his work and of what he has succesfully 
completed: "The first chapter deals in gen-
eral terms with elements which connect or 
separate the manuscript produced in single 
copies and the mass-produced printed book; 
it provides a background for all that follows. 
In the second chapter the invention of print-
ing, the background and the personality of 
printers, and a number of related problems 
are discussed. Chapters III-V deal with the 
economics of printing, publishing and sell-
ing. The sixth chapter is devoted to legal 
and political implications, while the two 
final chapters try to solve some of the ques-
tions which might tell us for what groups of 
readers texts were produced in different 
parts of Europe, and for what purpose." 

The reader of Printing, Selling and Read-
ing 1450-1550 will quickly learn from Dr. 
Hirsch's survey of the problems which fol-
lowed in the wake of the invention of 
printing that, as he puts it, "most of the 
blessings and the curses of printing and 
literacy have their roots in this early 
period." All of its conclusions are of in-
terest, but it is particularly in its statements 
concerning the spread of literacy as a re-
sult of the printed book that this work 
merits close attention. Unlike the earlier 
and well-known point of view as expressed 
by Arno Schirokauer, whose essay "Der 
Anteil des Buchdrucks an der Bildung des 
Gemeindeutschen" is often referred to, that 
" ·new lay readers belonged very frequently 
to the economically favored classes,' " Dr. 



448 I College & Research Libraries • November 1967 

Hirsch claims that: "Almost all classes of 
readers were affected by the new method 
of producing texts; it was the new reader, 
the person who belonged to groups which 
were formerly very largely without access 
to books, who benefited the most. As long 
as books were produced singly and were 
with few exceptions very expensive, 'Every-
man' had little opportunity to read and to 
own a book. Without the printed book 
literacy would also have spread, but at a 
much slower rate. It was the new reader 
who assured the ultimate success of print-
ing; mass production needed the expanding 
market. It was the new reader who tipped 
the scale in religious and socio-political con-
troversies of the XVIth century; he provided 
the popular support, and he was under-
standably the target of most of the propa-
ganda . . . the majority of new readers was 
recruited among children who formerly did 

not go to school, among women, and among 
the 'economically less favored' classes." 

:Printing, Selling and Reading 1450-1550 
is an encyclopedic work, rich and useful. If 
this valuable book has a fault, it is that it 
reads like an encyclopedia, with the ad-
ditional apparatus of bibliographical and 
historical scholarship-footnoted and docu-
mented fact piled upon footnoted and 
documented fact. Since the book is intended 
for the general reader as well as the special-
ist, one also misses a listing of at least the 
more important of those numerous yet es-
sential bibliographical tools which describe 
the books of the first century of printing and 
contemporary history and about which Dr. 
Hirsch displays an enviable familiarity. But 
these are relatively minor flaws in a work 
of great magnitude and accomplishment.-
]. M. Edelstein, University of California, 
Los Angeles.