College and Research Libraries


82 t ·College & Research Libraries • January 1976 

sembled here in one volume. It is not an es-
sential reference work-Louis A.· ·Kenney; 
Director of Library Services, San Diego 
State University. 

Sherrod, John, ed. Information Systems and 
Networks. Eleventh Annual Symposium, 
March 27-29, 1974. Produced by lnfor-

. matics, Inc., Westport, Conn.: Green-
. wood, 1975. 200p. $11.00. (LC 74-
·11941) (ISBN 0-8371-7717-0) 
If you like Irish stew this book is for you. 

Hidden behind a vague title is a symposium 
on on-line intera.ctive data base services. 
The Data: Base · Industry, or rriore accurately. 
the Data Base Complex, embraces activities 
ranging from creating data bases to provid-
ing data base ·services to end-users. It faces 
is~ues of design, economics, organization, 
and us~r requirements, and hardware-soft-
ware-telecommunication arrangements. 

The actors in the data base drama are: 
organizations that create and often publish 
data bases; · organizations that produce 
machine-readable versions of data bases; 
organizations that provide software access 
to data baseS; organizations that supply 
te;lecommunication connections; organiza-
ti<;>ns that offer services directly to us~rs or 
to intermediaries such as librarians, re-
s~arch organizations, and their funders; the· 
acJ,ministrators .and staffs of these organiza- · 
tions; and the end-users themselves. Most 
of the actors . are represented iri the sym-
posium. : · . · . 

. The is~ues facing these actors include the 
OP,timal ·design of data bases, of hardware, 
of: software, and of service interfaces. They 
inc1ude issues of financing development and 
operation, of subsidizing and recovering 
costs, and . of marketing and pricing ser-
vices. Issues relating to ·users include the 
characteristics of various 'user groups, their 
work requirements, and the system and 
service functions that best meet these re-
quirements. 

Most .of these issues are covered in vary-
ing depth in the symposium. Some of the 
m·ore substantive presentations are Roy Kid-
man's statement of the harsh constraints on 
aqademic libraries in offering on-line ser-
vices; Thomas Martin's review of alterna-
tives in designing interactive retrieval soft-

ware; ·Donald King and :Raymond ·Brown's 
eronomic model for deeiSions · on · using 
interactive services; Bennet· Lientz' s quanti-
fication of factors in deciding to :secure 
computer services through a network; Ken-
neth Siler's ;description of criteria for evalu-
ating data base management systems; and 
Paul Zurkowski's discussion of the role of 
the marketplace in providi.pg access to in-
formation. In addition, there. are lucid dis-:-
cussio.ns of .. data bases and services in areas 
such as toxicology, medi~ine, .aerospace, bi-
ology> .and chemistry. Historical and sum- . 
mary papers offer background information 
for the nontechnical reader . . · 

The virtue of this symposium is -that the 
main actors and issues in the Data Base 
Complex are represented. ·Its .defect is a 
lack of..a unifying plot that highlights the 
parties at issue and the. -alterna.tives each 
face. · The papers appear 01,1e · after the oth-
er; .· covering an astonishingly wide range, 
more like. a drama festival ' than .an evening 
with Ibsen. The symposium ·advances our 
ability to reach an integrated understand-
ing of what commercial, · academic, . profes-
sional, and governmental groups must do 
to make interactive services better and sup-
portable. Librarians, systems personnel, ad-
ministrators, and business people will each 
find several valuable papers in this sym-
posium. The . organizers deserve credit for 
making the proceedings available rapidly. 
-Douglas Ferguson, · Stanford University 
Libr{lnes, Stanford, California. · 

OTHER. PUBLICATIONS OF 
INTEREST TO ACADEMIC 

LIBRARIANS 
Alloman, Katherine A. A . Reference Guide 

to Postsecondary Education · Data Sour-
ces; A Dire(Jtory to Data Sources Corre-
sponding to Items in the NCHEMS 
StateWide Measilres Inventory. Boulder, 
Colo.:. National Center for Higher Edu-
cation Management Systems at Western 
Interstate Commission for Higher Educa-
tion, 1975. 1v. unpaged. $12.00. 

American Library Association. Office for 
Library , Service to the Disadvantaged. 
Multi-Ethic Media; Selected Bibliogra-