College and Research Libraries 66 I CoUege & Research Libraries: january 1978 The coverage for each author was not planned to replace a full checklist or bibli- ography. Such a decision makes good sense when one looks at such definitive works as Bowden's james Thurber: A Bibliography (Ohio State University Press, 1968) that are already available for many of the subjects. Yet, while the editors do note that "some lists are more detailed than others," there are a few items that might have been in- cluded. An extensive list for LeRoi Jones, for example, includes the broadside "April 13" published as Penny Poems #30 in 1959, but James Thurber's list begins with Oh My, Omar! published in 1921 by the Scarlet Mask Club rather than with his first printed piece, "The Third Bullet," published in Thurber's high school magazine, The X-Rays, in May 1913. Certain items, includ- ing play or movie scripts, offprints from journals, and private greetings, have been excluded by design. While each volume in the series is to be a complete alphabet in itself, an index to the set is planned for volume four. An overall descrip- MCGREGOR "PERSONALIZED SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE" Every customer Is assigned an experienced "Home Offk:e" representative. You comspond direct; any title nHds, changes, cancellations or problems can be handled promptly by letter or phone. This makes your job easier lfl.d_~ you abreast of your subscription needs at all uma. With over 45 years exper~Mce, McGregor has built a reputation of prompt and courteous service on bottl domestic and ln11mational titles. We prepay subscrip- tions ahead of time. Our customers. large and small, like the prompt attention we give them. We think you would tool Ask about McGregor's "Automatic Renewal" plan de- scribed In our new brochure. Wrltl today for your free copy. OUR 45th YEAR tion of the physical presentation of this work can be done in one word: excellent. Biologists, geologists, and chemists have had their field guides and handbooks for years. With the appearance of First Print- ings of American Authors, dealers, librari- ans, students, and collectors are now af- forded the tool that is as necessary for their work as the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is for the scientist. The editors end with the traditional bibliographer's lament: "all bibliography is work in progress." There is no doubt, however, that this work will fill a need and stimulate bibliographical activ- ity. This series belongs on the desk of any serious collector and in any library that supports such a person.-Scott Bruntjen, Head of Public Services, Library, Ship- pensburg State College, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. Libraries and the Life of the Mind in America. Addresses Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the American Library Association. Chicago: American Library Assn., 1977. 130p. $7.50. LC 77-3288. ISBN 0-8389-0238-3. Commemorative volumes, especially those devoted to centennials and bicenten- nials, should generally be approached with caution. This volume, alas, is not an excep- tion. It consists of six addresses, three given at the ALA Conference in San Francisco in 1975, three at Chicago in 1976. In descend- ing order of value they are reviewed below. "Libraries and the Development and Fu- ture of Tax Support" by R. Kathleen Molz is a sound, sensible, and thoroughly re- searched sketch of this subject. Useful to academic libraries is her description of the divided search for public funds-academic libraries seeking bibliographical control, public libraries seeking mass education. Her solution is the pursuit of policy research, probably leading to a client-centered rather than an institution-centered approach. Dan M. Lacy's "Libraries and the Free- dom of Access to Information" is lucid and eloquent and gets to the heart of the prob- lem of access. Those of us who have been in academic libraries during the thirty years since World War II will find ourselves nod- ding our heads in agreement with his knowledgeable depiction of the enormous broadening under the G.l. Bill, the promise of the 1960s, and the reversal of the 1970s that has forced hasty consideration of "net- working" rather than the provision of ade- quately supported libraries. Harriet Pilpel is known to most librarians as a victorious advocate in suits involving censorship and as a trenchant and ·witty writer. Her "Libraries and the First Amendment," despite acknowledgment of ALA's defense of intellectual freedom, deals more with threats to the First Amendment than with libraries' attempts to repel them. Pilpel indirectly expresses misgivings about recent Supreme Court decisions in obscen- ity cases and espouses what she calls "neut- ral principles," which is her "shorthand way of saying that all ideas and depictions should be welcome in a free marketplace of thought." Her essay is a delight to read. The title of John Hope Franklin's lecture, "Libraries in a Pluralistic Society," afforded the lecturer an arena in which to condemn the policies that permitted libraries and li- brarians to reflect "the darker phases of American society" by their unfair treatment of ethnic minorities. A rather oratorical homily in professorese adjures librarians to "do much to create a social order of peace, purposefulness, and mutual respect such as we have never known before." The Librarian of Congress, attending his first meeting of the American Library As- sociation, entitled his address "The Indivisi- ble Community." This subject is sufficiently broad to permit Boorstin to begin by de- scribing the limbo in which public libraries now find themselves as contrasted to their vigor a century ago, when they were guided by "three founding principles" -self-help, autonomy of the individual, and community. By a process not fully traced, these princi- ples have become blurred in an "Age of Broadcasting." Television, the chief medium of this age, should be used "to make 1V viewers into more avid book readers and more ·enthusiastic library users." It is doubt- ful that most TV viewers are now avid read~rs and enthusiastic patrons of libraries whose degree of avidity and enthusiasm may be increased by propaganda on the tube. Boorstin's statement that Herbert Putnam "began selling library cards" in 1901 implies that admission was charged to Recent Publications I 61 the library over which he now presides. Perhaps Herman Liebaers' "Impact of American and European Librarianship upon Each Other" makes more sense in its origi- nal French or Flemish, but in English it is a disjointed and spasmodic personal view of the politics of IFLA, ALA, FID, and UNESCO-far from the survey implied by the title. There appears to be no organization to the material; the style occasionally drops to such phrases as "automaticity of priorities"; it abounds in paradoxes that are not paradoxes; in short, it is a disappointment. The only typographical error I discovered is an amusing one. Joseph C. Rowell, librar- ian of the University of California in 1905, in lamenting the inadequate support of academic libraries in comparison to the riches of public libraries, is quoted from Li- brary Journal: "Enviously I have been the public librarian, with a city's treasury at his back, wasting his substance in trumpery novels by the thousand." Library journal gives the verb correctly as "seen."-Henry Miller Madden, University Librarian, California State University, Fresno. Oboler, Eli M. Ideas and the University Li- brary: Essays of an Unorthodox Academic Librarian. Contributions in Librarianship and Information Science, no.20. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977. 203p. $14.95. LC 77-1l.r ISBN 0-8371-9531-4. ISSN 0084-9243. Paraphrasing an Oboler dictum, given a choice most book reviewers would rather review a volume with a central theme than a collection of essays and speeches; but when will some librarian frankly write in a review, "This collection is no work of great research but has several exciting pieces of miscellanea that your readers will enjoy. I have. Buy in quantity!"? Those who know Eli Oboler or who have watched him on the library scene for more than a quarter of a century will appreciate his having assembled what he must consider the best of his "utterances" in this one vol- ume. Included are 30 titles under 7 head- ings plus an exhaustive bibliography con- taining 152 items, not including numerous book reviews and reading lists. The flavor of the writing is the flavor of the man; and, as he says in the preface, the