College and Research Libraries to present quality programs, as well as the responsibility of participants in such programs.-Sheila Greth , University of Connecticut, Storrs. National Library and Information Services: A Handbook for Planners. Edited by C. V. Penna, D. J. Foskett, and P. H. Sewell . London, Boston: Butterworths, 1977. 231p. $16.95. LC .76-54296. ISBN 0-408-70818-2. (Available from Butter- worths, 19 Cummings Park, Woburn, MA 01801.) Librarians familiar with the works of C. V. Penna will find that this volume is an elaboration and expansion of his theories and earlier works on planning library ser- vices for underdeveloped nations. In this handbook , in collaboration with P. H . Sewell, formerly senior library advisor in the Department of Education and Science in Great Britain, and D. J. Foskett, librar- ian of the University of London Institute of Education, Penna makes a case for " con- scious and systematic" planning of. national library and information systems at the high- est government level. The authors propose, furthermore, that effective and efficient systems can only be developed if planned within the nation's so- cial and economic structure and submit that these systems are successful only if manage- rial control is similar to that used in large- scale industry. ., Librarians, interestingly enough, are not the target audience for this book. The au- thors state that , in their treatment of this topic, they have deliberately catered to the "political, educational and administrative au- thorities who, in many cases, have had to assume responsibility for LIS planning with very ·little information or precedent to guide them." They hasten to add, however, that they recognize that library professionals have been trained by many library schools in the principles and techniques of planning but unfortunately have had few occasions to use their expertise. The authors have likewise been careful to point out that centralized planning is more apt to take place in countries such as the USSR where centrally planned economies are the norm , rather than in countries such as the United States and western Europe Recent Publications I 15 whex:e national libraries and information centers have developed in a decentralized and more happenstance fashion. Although extremely informative, the scope and content of the handbook are so · broad that coverage of each topic is uneven. At times it appears that the authors cannot decide whether they are writing a textbook or a handbook and end up doing a little bit of both. Educators can find a list of topics useful for teaching a course in planning li- brary information systems; others will find this a compact guidebook. Two-thirds of the book deals with meth- odology, principles, and techniques of plan- ning; the preparation of plans and matrixes; policy making ; the relationship between formulation of policy and financial control; and the relationship of library and informa- tion systems to other government agencies. The authors touch upon problems unique to underdeveloped nations such as lack of pub- lishing houses, use and maintenance of nonbook materials, accountability, and dif- ficulties of forecasting manpower needs and supply. Only the last chapter of the book deals with implementation and hastily covers such topics as staffing; acquisitions and selection policies and procedures; cataloging and bib- liographic control; the variety of classifica- tion schemes that lend themselves to sys- tematic arrangement of an information sys- tem ; abstracting and indexing; thesauri ; and use of automatic data processing. It is unfortunate that, although the au- thors appear to have used an extensive amount of documentation in collecting data for this volume, they chose to limit their bibliography to a few selected items. In spite of its limitations, the handbook is a worthwhile addition to library collec- tions.-Sylvia G. Faibisoff, Northern Illi- nois University , De Kalb. Books Are for Use. Final Report of the Subject Access Project to the Council on Library Resources. Pauline Atherton, Di- rector. School of Information Studies, Re- search Studies #4. Syrac.use, N.Y. : School of Information Studies, 1978. 172p . $10 (10% handling costs and N .Y. sales tax if applicable). (Order [IST-10] from: Printing Services, Syracuse Univer- 76 I College & Research Libraries • january 1979 sity, 125 College Place, Syracuse, NY 13210.) The need for expanded subject access to books has long been neglected in practice but not in the literature. Atherton con- cludes Books Are for Use with a quotation from Thoreau: "The book is the most treas- ured wealth of the world." This quote, she reminds us, is included in the mosaic deco- ration of the Library of Congress, and she asks: "Are we the bankers and brokers of that wealth or are we the misers?" We have been, and are, the misers. On-line· data bases have expanded the ac- cess to journal articles and similar materials. These data bases, however, rarely include expanded access to books. And books, how- ever media-minded and journal-oriented we may have become, are still the core of our collections, account for a very large part of the expenditure of our resources, and are underused due to the limited access to their contents that is provided by the traditional catalog record. The Subject Access Project added from thirty to thirty-five subject descriptors, de- rived from the contents and index terms and phrases in the book, to 1,979 MARC records, thus constructing the BOOKS data base. A number of free text-searching tests were then conducted. During these con- trolled search tests, the regular MARC data base retrieved 56 and the BOOKS data base retrieved 130 relevant items. BOOKS searches resulted in fewer non- relevant items; the average precision of MARC searches was 35 percent and of BOOKS searches 46 percent. The average MARC search took eight minutes; the aver- age BOOKS search took four minutes. And BOOKS provided access to some items that a MARC search would never have revealed. The project successfully demonstrated that suitable information to augment the traditional record is already available in a high percentage of the books we catalog. The terms and phrases selected from con- tents pages and indexes did produce a use- ful, if not the most useful, vocabulary for on-line searching. The cost of selecting and inputting these additional descriptors is not prohibitive, nor is the cost of storage and retrieval. And, finally, the augmented rec- ords did provide greater, more specific, and faster access to the books in the data base. Again the need for expanded subject ac- cess has been demonstrated and significant research toward a viable means of expanded access completed. But who is going to fol- low it through? Atherton suggests "that some effort needs to be launched by a re- . sponsible organization if we are ever going to get off the dead center of poor subject access .... Either the Library of Congress, the National Library of Canada, the Na- tional Federation of Abstracting and Index- ing Services, or the American Association of Publishers needs to review the present scene and begin to work towards improve- ments" (p.87--88). Will Books Are for Use become another lost work, through poor subject access, on the dire need for expanded subject access? Will the responsible organization please stand up?-]oan K. Marshall, Brooklyn College. Morehead, Joe. Introduction to United States Public Documents. Library Science Text Series. 2d ed. Littleton, Colo.: Li- braries Unlimited, 1978. 377p. $17.50 cloth U.S. and Canada, $21 elsewhere; $11.50 paper U.S. and Canada, $13.50 elsewhere. LC 78-16866. ISBN 0-87287- 186-X (cloth), 0-87287-190-8 (paper). Continuing his record of scholarship and writing in his inimitable style, Morehead has refined and updated the excellent first edition. The purpose of the work remains the same: "To set forth an introductory ac- count of public documents, their locus, dif- fusion, habitation and use . . . for library school students, professional librarians and the general user of government publica- tions." The new edition covers the following major categories: Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents, de- pository library systelll, nondepository pub- lications, selected · general guides to federal publications, legislative branch materials, publications of the presidency, department and agency publications, publications of the judiciary, documents of independent and regulatory agencies, and reports of advisory committees and commissions. In addition, two appendixes cover special problems in documents librarianship and abbreviations,