College and Research Libraries 180 I College & Research L ibraries • March 1976 This work is obviously of special interest to those involved with the literature of sci- ence and technology and its analysis and control. The numerous examples are drawn from scientific and technical fields. It is to be emphasized, however, that it should be of equal interest to librarians, library school faculty and students, and others, regardless of subject orientation, concerned with the classification, subject analysis, control, and retrieval of information. Although written within the framework of science and tech- nology, the concepts and methods Vickery so clearly presents and reviews are not lim- ited to a particular area of knowledge.- ]. R. Moore, Library Department, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Cassata, Mary B., and Totten, Herman L., eds. The Administrative Aspects of Edu- cation for Librarianship: A Symposium. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1975. 407p. $14.50. (LC 75-15726) (ISBN 0-8108- 0829-3) The editor of C&RL might have gotten a better review, and more promptly, simply by reprinting the excellent short introduc- tion to this book by Russel E. Bidlack, who also wrote one of the best chapters, "Stan- dards for Accreditation, 1972." To some degree, along with other recent writing on library education, this book is a response to Targets for Research in Li- brary Education, edited by Harold Borko, published by ALA in 1973. The title is not quite descriptive-better to have omitted "Administrative Aspects" because it covers all aspects of the 1972 Standards (Bidlack points out in his introduction that the dis- cussions range considerably beyond admin- istration as · one ordinarily thinks of the word); and better to have omitted "Sym- posium" because the papers did not result from a meeting where several speakers de- livered short addresses on a topic (although symposium can also mean a collection of opinions on a subject). The twenty-two chapters, or papers, are organized, preced- ed by a prologue and followed by an epi- logue, under eight sections, the core of which correspond to the headings of the 1972 ALA Standards for Accreditation. The Standards are reprinted as an appendix. Had I chosen the title, it would have been Education for Librarianship in the ·context of the 1972 Standards for Accreditation. The two editors and twenty-five other au- thors are well qualified for their. assign- ments. Among them are names long fa- miliar in library literature as well as those of some relative newcomers. With one ex- ception all of the papers were written spe- cifically for this book; and the exception (Elizabeth Stone on the "Role of the Aca- demic Institution in Continuing Library Education") was carefully reworked from a 1974 publication. Blessedly, this is not another "reader" with the hodgepodge of chronology, lack of focus, and perpetuation of obsolescent literature which that genre so often implies. There is an excellent, re- liable index. The number of chapters is fair- ly well distributed among the sections: one on the history of library education; one on the 1972 Standards themselves; six on pro- gram goals and objectives; two on curricu- lum; only one on faculty; four on students; six on governance, administration, and fi- nancial support; one on physical resources and facilities; one on the accreditation visit; and the epilogue, "Library Education: Leader or Follower?" by Mary Cassata. Multiple authorship has its advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, it would have been impossible for any single one of the authors or editors to have done the research in adequate depth, and then the writing, within a reasonable time. It is refreshing to have several points of view. It is reassuring to know that the authors deal with specific topics in which they are already recognized as experts or in which the papers at hand demonstrate that they have become expert. There are also the disadvantages-re- dundancy, lacunae, contradictions, uneven- ness-which even the most skillful and con- scientious editors cannot eliminate. when they assemble a collection of papers solicit- ed from many authors. Inevitably, no two authors will work from the same corpus of source material; some will overlook a sig- nificant item which another has used; on the same issue, one will use a more current or reliable text than another. An example can be found in this book: Carroll (p.22- 23) discusses the two-year master's degree and the need for specialization that cannot ' be covered in the one-year program. He speaks of the Canadian example and "the gestures at UCLA" and states that "it does not appear that librarianship will return to the two-year master's degree program which it formally abandoned with the adoption of the 1951 Standards.'' So far as UCLA is concerned, the two-year program is not a gesture but an approved and oper- ating program. He cites an obsolete docu- ment, a proposal rather than a finally ap- proved program statement. As he is a UCLA alumnus, it seems strange he did not check out the program by a letter or phone call rather than label it a gesture. Winger (p.92) also discusses the length of the mas- ter's degree program, without citing the source of his 1972 statistics, which must have been those published by the American Library Association. Since Winger is the dean of the Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago, and since ALA headquarters is in Chicago, one wonders why he did not use more current informa- tion. He might then have learned that at least one school in the U.S. lengthened its program for the purpose of providing great- er specialization and an element of research in its master's degree program. In fairness, he may have had in mind this school (UCLA), along with Chicago itself, among the "some schools" which he says have longer than one-year programs. Other au- thors in the book (see index under Califor- nia, University at Los Angeles) have found more current information about UCLA, so it may really not matter. There is, however, at least some inconsistency. This is an important, useful book. The editors are to be congratulated for bringing it together, the publisher for getting it into our hands in a good format at a reasonable price for these times, and the authors for their truly significant contributions. It will be of great value to library schools (deans, faculties, students, staffs), to persons con- cerned with accreditation, to university ad- ministrators, and to those members of the profession who recognize the crucial impor- tance of professional education in the real- ization of the goals of library and informa- tion science which have been set by the profession in generaL-Andrew H. Horn, University of California, Los Angeles. Recent Publications I 181 Montgomery, Leon. Document Retrieval Systems: Factors AUecting Search Time. (Books in Library and Information Sci- ence, vol.14.) New York: Marcel Dekker, 1975. 144p. $12.75. (LC 75-18692) (ISBN 0-8247-6195-2) This monograph reports the results of an experiment which Montgomery conducted to explore those factors which were thought to affect search time in an information stor- age and retrieval system. The factors were selected for the explanation of search time and included the number of documents searched, the number of questions asked, and the file organization techniques. These experiments were run in a batch- oriented system in a multiprogramming en- vironment using the computer's clock as a timing device. Thus, the times reported are estimates and are so specified by the au- thor. Not surprisingly, it was found that af- ter an arbitrary number of documents the inverted file system gives search times con- sistently lower than the search times re- quired for linear file organizations. The number of questions asked of a particular data base was also found to be related to search time. Specifically, the time was con- sistently lower with the inverted file, pro- vided the number of questions was suffi- ciently large. The author finds that "the in- verted file organization and search tech- nique becomes more efficient from a search time point of view for situations having more than 32 questions and more than 512 documents." However, these findings are obviously limited to batch-oriented systems. The book is directed toward the design- ers of information systems and not the casual reader. The results are interesting and do provide the reader with a signifi- cant experimental result, but these results are less generalizable than one would like due to their restriction to batch-oriented systems. Thus, the text is not directly useful to the individual designing an interactive information system. One must question the validity of the presentation of the results of an experiment as an approach in a text. Certainly the au- thor's findings would have made a valuable journal article. The book does provide an excellent example of experimental method- ology and may perhaps be best used as a