College and Research Libraries


292 College & Research Libraries 

Dowell, Arlene Taylor. AACR2 Headings: 
A Five-Year Projection of Their Impact on 
Catalogs. Littleton, Colo. : Libraries Un-
limited, 1982. 146p. $22.50 U.S./$27 
elsewhere . LC 82-9927. ISBN 0-87287-
330-7. 
Arlene Taylor's dissertation (published 

under her former name) has received 
much public attention. Her presentations 
and dis"semination of the preliminary and 
final findings, and the timeliness of these, 
may have left some librarians feeling that 
reading the finished product is unneces-
sary. This impression is a mistaken one. 
Taylor was able to give the library commu-
nity some needed information, but this 
work is much more than a way to answer 
the question, "How much might AACR2 
and desuperimposition cost my library?'' 

The work makes several major contribu-
tions to library practice and research. One 
is the clear description and analysis of the 
problem that confronted libraries in im-
plementing AACR2 while using Library of 
Congress cataloging in the current card cat-
alog environment. The careful description 
of the problem and the development of 
hypotheses, choice of methodology, and 
analysis of data, provide insights into the 
dissection of a complex problem. The 
result is the information needed to ana-
lyze the problem in the reader's own li-
brary. 

On a more general level, the work ad-
dresses the problems faced by the catalog-
ing administrator who must look at the 
complex bibliographic environment, and 
improve the relatively rudimentary ways 
by which most of us continue to provide 
bibliographic access. It suggests some 
means of analyzing this environment to-
ward increasing our understanding of the 
forces at work in maintaining a catalog. 
The work also looks at the entire question 
of costing library services. Research that 
looks at costs and describes alternative 
models is still at a basic level. Taylor's 
work has moved us closer to planning 
with facts rather than planning primarily 
by instinct. 

One of the early discoveries made by 
Taylor was that librarians know very little 
about the proportion of types of headings 
in the card catalog. Taylor has docu-

July 1983 

mented the disproportionate number of 
personal names in our catalogs. Her dis-
covery, that sampling theory may not pro-
duce samples of a sufficient size to mea-
sure the characteristics of other kinds of 
headings, is an important one. As re-
search into catalog use proceeds, it be-
comes more and more important for us to 
understand the inherent biases of the cata-
logs we build, so that we can interpret our 
research findings correctly. Taylor has laid 
a foundation for studies into the nature of 
modern catalogs . 

The work is easy to read, and not overly 
"cataloger-ish" in its approach to the 
problem. It is clearly a landmark study 
and should be read by all professionals.-
Nancy R. John, University of Illinois at Chi-
cago. 

Chen, Ching-chih, and Hernon, Peter. In-
formation Seeking: Assessing and Antici-
pating User Needs . New York: Neal-
Schuman, 1982. 205p. $22.95. LC 
82-6320. ISBN 0-918212-50-2. 
This book is an important contribution 

to an ever growing body of literature on 
the needs of information users. Breaking 
new ground in methodology (first time 
use of telephone survey), the study covers 
a wide geographic area (six states). The in-
vestigators place information seeking in 
context, distinguishing between occupa-
tion related and nonoccupational informa-
tion needs, and view the library as one of 
many competing information providers. 

Use of the telephone survey technique 
allowed a very large sample to be sur-
veyed at low cost: 2,400 persons were con-
tacted in six New England states. Analysis 
of the data revealed that respondents 
drew heavily on interpersonal providers 
for most of their information needs, and 
that libraries constitute a secondary and 
often unimportant resource. Although li-
braries were consulted by 17 percent of all 
respondents (a figure higher than prior 
studies conducted in Baltimore, Seattle, 
and California), libraries ranked only 
ninth among all information providers. 

This conclusion is not surprising consid-
ering the wide diversity of information 
needs and information seeking covered by 
these studies. The decision of the present