College and Research Libraries


76 I College & Research Libraries • January 1975 

one of those paperback books doctored to 
have the appearance of a regular hardbound 
trade edition-presumably to help keep 
buyers from screaming at the outrageous 
$12.95 price. 

An acquaintance of mine, an anthropolo-
gist, once said of a horrible book about the 
American Indian that, "In every library 
there should be a place for at least one 
truly bad book." I leave you with that 
thought.-W. David Laird, University Li-
brarian, University of Arizona, Tucson. 

Irvine, Betty Jo. Slide Libraries: A Guide 
for Academic Institutions and Museums. 
Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 
Inc., 1974. 219p. $12.50. 
Slide Libraries is an ambitious under-

taking. There has been no attempt before 
in the literature to create a complete guide 
to the establishment and management of 
slide libraries; this is a commendable first 
effort by Betty J o Irvine. It covers the 
breadth of the field-the historical devel-
opment of photography and slidemaking, 
professional qualifications for slide library 
staffing, classification and cataloging of 
slides, use of standard "book library" tech-
niques, acquisition and production meth-
ods, storage systems, layout and planning 
of physical facilities, projection systems, 
equipment and supplies-but in 157 pages 
of text it cannot deal with most of these 
topics in enough depth to make it a defini-
tive manual. The chapter on classification 
and cataloging, for instance, describes in 
only 20 pages the diverse classification sys-
tems of seven different institutions. Such 
brief descriptions may confuse more than 
they enlighten unless the reader under-
stands them as introductions to alternative 
solutions and follows up the leads to pri-
mary sources for more detailed information. 

The book does present a broad overview 
and identifies the major organizational wa-
tershed decisions that must be made in es-
tablishing a new collection-what catalog-
ing strategy to follow, whether to organize 
and file in fixed sets or by individual image, 
whether to store for maximum interfiling 
expandability or for maximum visual dis-
play, etc. To these questions Ms. Irvine 

. does not offer dogmatic solutions, but sug-
gests a variety of options as they might ap-

ply in a variety of situations. Answers to the 
tough questions are, therefore, indecisive 
and may leave some readers dissatisfied. 
Part of the problem is that an all-encom-
passing book on slide libraries must speak 
to museums, instructional media centers, 
and teaching departments in art and other 
academic subjects, as well as to libraries in 
the traditional mold. 

Perhaps the strongest feature of the book 
is the fifty-plus pages of source material 
following the text: a directory of distribu-
tors and manufacturers of equipment and 
supplies, a directory of commercial slide 
sources, a directory of over 200 slide li-
braries, and an extensive bibliography of 
books and articles dating for the most part 
from the 1960s and 1970s. The book will 
be generally useful to anyone in the throes 
of organization; the source features may 
prove useful to an established slide library. 
-Wendell W. Simons, Associate University 
Librarian, University of California, Santa 
Cruz. 

Downs, Robert Bingham, ed. Guide to n-
linois Library Resources. Chicago: pub-
lished in cooperation with the Illinois 
State Library by the American Library 
Assn., 1974. 565p. $10.00. 
Downs' Guide to Illinois Library Re-

sources is a potpourri of information en-
compassing a broad spectrum of subjects, 
types of materials, and individuals both 
local and historical, as well as an extensive 
bibliography of references to books, pamph-
lets, etc., which list or describe library col-
lections in Illinois. The impetus for this sur-
vey of Illinois resources came from the Illi-
nois Board of Higher Education but was es-
sentially financed by the Illinois State Li-
brary. The remaining forty-nine states 
would do well to follow the example set by 
the state of Illinois. 

The information for this guide was ob-
tained by means of a questionnaire in 
which librarians were asked to provide de-
tailed information about their collections. 
Four subject fields-American literature, 
medicine, law, and music-were surveyed 
by specialists. 

According to the introduction, the Guide 
has the broadest possible scope and is un-
restricted as far as library collections are