College and Research Libraries


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 



68 I College & Research Libraries • January 1978 

writings "have a certain unity as statements 
of fact and opinion reflecting the profes-
sional life of an academic librarian in 
America in the generation between the 
post-World-War-11 euphoria of the early 
1950s and the bicentennial frenzies of 
pos-t-Watergate 1976." Included are such 
topics ·as a brief history of a scholarly li-
brary, his personal views on library 
mechanization, intellectual freedom, censor-
ship, the history and influence of library as-
sociations, his reaction to library statistics, 
and ~9me thoughts on academic librari-
anship. 

The concluding chapter entitled "Miscel-
lanea" in itself makes this book worth hav-
ing. It contains some of his salty letters to 
editors and a group of witty remarks so 
characteristic of Eli Oboler. He might have 
spared us a sample of his verse, however! 

This is not a "must purchase" book for 
every library since most of the writings have 
appeared in familiar journals. However, it is 
a useful compilation of the writings of an ar-
ticulate, intelligent, critical librarian who 
has something to say and who is not afraid 
to say it. The volume is attractively pro-
duced by Greenwood Press as number 
twenty in its series on Contributions in Li-
brarianship and Information Science.-Dale 
M. Bentz, University Librarian, University 
of Iowa, Iowa City. 

Shores, Louis. The Generic Book: What It 
Is and How It Works. Learning for Living 
Series. Norman, Okla.: Library-College 
Associates, 1977. 164p. $5. LC 77-22891. 
ISBN 0-917706-02-1. 
By the "Generic Book" (a term that 

Shores insists on capitalizing) is meant "the 
total number of ways which men have of 
communicating with each other," and its 
utility in education is the availability to the 
individual learner of an infinite variety of 
ways to acquire knowledge and information. 
Three dimensions of the Generic Book are 
explored in detail: the subject (content), 
level, and format aspects. Then follow chap-
ters on the characteristics of print versus 
graphic materials and of human versus en-
vironmental resources as carriers of informa-
tion. Although none of these concepts will 
be new to the veteran educator, Shores' 

discussion may prove enlightening to any-
one who has not yet seriously considered 
how people learn most effectively. 

As the acknowledged and prolific dean of 
the library-college movement, one would 
expect Shores to have something significant 
to say about what constitutes effective edu-
cational media. Indeed he has. The pity is, 
however, that his exposition is rambling, 
repetitive, and so theoretical-in the con-
ceptual rather than the technical sense-
that the reader who accepts his arguments 
is frustrated by the lack of practical sugges-
tions for implementing what is in fact a 
serious educational manifesto. 

Furthermore, the exact relevance of the 
Generic Book construct for the librarian is 
only hinted at, with much more emphasis 
given to the role of the teacher in conven-
tional terms. One would have to be quite 
familiar with the tenets of the library-
college model to understand where the li-
brarian fits in the larger picture since the 
words "library" and "librarian" are rarely 
used. 

Despite its brevity, the essential message 
of The Generic Book could have been con-
veyed in one-tenth the pages. Shores' 
exposition moves at a snail's pace, further 
aggravated by the frequent use of such pa-
tronizing phrases as "by now it should be 
clear," "needless to say," and "in light of all 
these things," and for the most part unre-
lieved by documentation. The work has no 
index and concludes with a brief bibliogra-
phy citing the old standbys of library-college 
thought. 

Although this tract does have its place in 
any extensive education or library science 
collection, it is a shame that by dwelling 
overlong on content, level, and format, 
Shores abuses two other key elements of 
human intellectual experience, time and 
space, muffling his sharp thought in clear 
but extraneous verbiage. In short, The 
Generic Book is a bore with a point.-Mary 
W. George, University of Michigan Library, 
Ann Arbor. 

Kurth, William H., and Zubatsky, David S. 
Recommended Procedures for the Inter-
nal Financial Auditing of University Li-
braries. St. Louis, Mo.: Washington 
Univ. Libraries, 1977. 96p. (Available in 

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