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BOOK REVIEWS 

Downs, Robert Bingham. Perspectives on 
the Past: An Autobiography. Metuchen, 
N.J.: Scarecrow, 1984. 225p. $17.50. LC 
84-5589. ISBN 0-8108-1703-9. 
The distinguished longtime librarian of 

the University of Illinois is a man whose 
career, accomplishments, and words have 
received much deserved respect and at-
tention. Here he offers an accounting of 
his life, what he calls his Apologia Pro Vita 
Mea. 

Downs' career speaks for itself; he need 
not justify it and indeed he does not apolo-
gize at all. Rather he expresses very con-
siderable satisfaction with his choice of a 
profession and assures us that he has 
never experienced any doubts about that 
decision. Asked by a recent biographer 
whether he had suffered major disap-
pointments or failures to accomplish any-
thing of great importance that he had 
sought to do, he simply replied that he 
could think of none. Though many of us 
who experience self-doubts or, at the 
least, some regrets that we could not also 
have tried some other appealing roads 
may find such complacency odd, the rec-
ord provides every reason to justify 
Downs' satisfaction. 

With only brief experience in subordi-
nate positions, he headed three important 
libraries in his early career, starting at 
Colby College and moving to the Univer-
sity of North Carolina and to New York 
University before beginning his twenty-
eight years at Illinois. At each he was 
notably successful. Accompanying these 
principal work assignments were contri-
butions as library educator, as library con-

sultant and resources surveyor in the 
United States and abroad, as active mem-
ber and contributor to professional associ-
ations, and as prolific author of books and 
articles dealing both with librarianship 
and such related topics as folklore, great 
books, and intellectual freedom. 

Surely the personal report of such stew-
ardship promises much of value to those 
who come after him. The book itself is 
generously illustrated and printed in an 
attractive style considerably above the 
usual standard of this publisher. Every-
one in these lines of work will find it 
interesting-but not fascinating. Downs is 
not alone among academic librarians in re-
cent years in writing an autobiography 
that tells us less than we would wish. But 
Ellsworth, Lyle, Metcalf, Powell, Ready, 
Shores, and-judging by Martin's report 
of the source of much of Tauber's ostensi-
ble biography-Wilson gave us consider-
able amounts of personal and private testi-
mony, Metcalf most of all. Downs, 
unfortunately, lives up to his reputation 
as a private and reserved man. Not only 
does he withhold his personal feelings 
and reactions but he also writes in ways 
well calculated to put a distance between 
himself and his reader. 

He has chosen to organize the work, not 
in the chronological fashion in which a life 
is lived but in topical order: people he has 
known professionally, administrative po-
sitions he has held, research collections he 
has built, resources he has analyzed, li-
braries he has surveyed, association activ-
ities he has been engaged in, . foreign as-
signments he has carried out, books he 
has found influential, ideas and events of 

283 



284 College & Research Libraries 

intellectual freedom he has involved him-
self in, folklore he has studied, and per-
sonal and family matters. More than a 
third of the text consists of quotations 
from articles he has written. Of the first 
chapter, "People," ten of the twenty-four 
pages are quoted passages, eight of them 
from a frequently reprinted speech on his 
views on supervisory style. The book, all 
too often, has the character of compila-
tions on the successive topics rather than 
the firsthand, personal testimony that the 
reader of an autobiography hopes to find. 

In style too, the work has fortunate char-
acteristics. Surprisingly in one who has 
written so prolifically, Downs frequently 
commits the fault of the misplaced or dan-
gling modifier, perhaps because of his 
predilection for the passive voice. Perhaps 
in response to a wish not to claim credit 
not due him, he tends not to spell out his 
own positions in many instances, with the 
odd and presumably unintended result 
that the reader, not being told anything of 
the ebb and flow of discussion, begins to 
get the impression that every favorable 
outcome is to be credited to Downs him-
self. Sitting in my office overlooking Lake 
Mendota, I can only rejoice that the under-
graduate library of the University of Wis-
consin was placed in this scenic location. 
Do I owe that fortunate outcome only to 
Downs and his recommendation or was it 
the result of many suggestions? Through-
out the book similar ambiguities occur. 

Even though this book surely adds to 
what was made known in Arthur P. 
Young's chapter in Leaders in American Ac-
ademic Librarianship: 1925-1975 (Beta Phi · 
Mu, 1983), nothing in it impresses one as 
being new or different. The unique contri-
bution Downs has to make to the story is 
only briefly made here. His disclaimer-
that he intends to write only a professional 
biography-does not entirely satisfy the 
need for candid assessment of persons 
and events, if indeed we are to learn as 
much as we might from his experience. He 
lists, for example, a number of the depart-
mental librarians at lllinois and he omits 
others. Does the difference have any par-
ticular significance? Does it represent a 
variation in his judgments of people or is it 
solely a function of space? He lists some 

May 1986 

chief librarians of major universities and 
omits others contemporary to them. What 
is the meaning of those differences? His 
discussion of the Center for Research Li-
braries provides one illustration of the 
substance that is missing. For better or for 
worse, the center surely represents one of 
the most imaginative conceptions of the 
past half-century. Downs briefly ex-
presses reservations about the institution. 
It would help the rest of us to know more 
of the professional and even the personal 
considerations that lie behind these brief 
remarks. He provides a reference to a pa-
per published some thirty years ago, but a 
contemporary discussion and a retrospec-
tive evaluation would surely help us. In 
this connection appears one of the many 
ambiguous passages in which, though 
Downs does not claim credit for an out-
come, a reader might reasonably conclude 
that it is due to him: "When I was chair- . 
man of the MILC Board of Directors . . •. I 
proposed a name change: the Center for 
Research Libraries, and the recommenda-
tion was accepted. Afterward, a large 
number of U.S. libraries outside the Mid-
west and in Canada became members" 
(p.35). The sea change in the institution 
symbolized by this revision of the name is 
a topic that warrants detailed exposition, 
and, if Downs indeed developed the idea 
as well as the name to express it, he de-
serves great credit or perhaps blame. I sus-
pect the matter is considerably more com-
plex than this passage suggests and I feel 
some confidence that Downs did not in-
tend to claim either credit or blame. But, 
since he does not tell us, we do not know. 

It is not a happy situation to be critical of 
the work of one who has so clearly merited 
much or perhaps all of the praise he has re-
ceived. Yet one could wish that the writer 
of an autobiography would tell us more 
that is direct, explicit, and candid. We 
have much to learn from the career of Rob-
ert Bingham Downs. The public record of 
that career is masterfully marshaled here. 
A great deal of it, however, was available 
before, and the unique contribution he 
had to make to the story is only briefly 
made. There is almost nothing that is truly 
personal or even, except in the literal 
meaning of the word, autobiographical.-



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286 College & Research Libraries 

meaning of the word, autobiographical.-
W. L. Wzlliamson, Library School, University 
of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Cleveland, William S. The Elements of 
Graphing Data. Monterey, Calif.: 
Wadsworth Advanced Books and Soft-
ware, 1985. 323p. $18.95 LC 85-10603. 
ISBN 0-5340-3730-5. 
The only negative thing that might be 

said in connection with this book is that it 
probably won't be read by even a fraction 
of the scholars who could benefit signifi-
cantly from exposure to its content. Cleve-
land's insights and principles go far be-
yond the relativity simple problem of 
creating legible graphics; as he writes in 
the preface: "This book ... contains 
graphical methods and principles that are 
powerful tools for showing the structure of 
data'' (p .1, my italics). 

Like maps (with which I am most famil-
iar), graphs are made for two quite differ-
ent reasons. The first is data analysis, for 
which t};le scholar uses the graph to tease 
out or make explicit relationships among 
observations for his own benefit. The sec-
ond is data communication, for which the 
scholar-analyst has determined what the 
structure of the data is and wants to com-
municate it effectively to others. Thus a 
graph can be both an intermediate work-
ing tool and a final product, uniquely effi-
cient for both, superior in many instances 
to words, numbers, or (even) maps. But in 
the formal educational curriculum at all 
levels (including college and graduate 
school) there is an almost overwhelming 
bias in favor of acquiring and conveying 
meaningful relationships among data in 
verbal or numerical form. Cleveland's 
book forces one to realize what a serious 
loss this is for scholarship, even for our 
culture as a whole. 

The Elements of Graphing Data is to 
graphs what Strunk and White's The Ele-
ments of Style is to text; high praise is 
implied and intended in this parallel. 
Cleveland's writing style-dear, concise, 
orderly, authoritative, and commonsensi-
cal-suggests that he has more than a 
passing aquaintance with Strunk and 
White's classic volume. The publisher has 
also done well by Cleveland, with attrac-

May 1986 

tive, legible type, and a generally well 
thought out book design. 

As to content, the book contains four 
major sections. The first is a brief introduc-
tory discussion about graphs, with an em-
phasis not so much on their form per se 
(although he integrates knowledgeably 

. the subject of visual perception with all as-
pect of graphs) as on the meaning that 
data can take on in graphed form. Cleve-
land, a scientist at AT&T Bell Laborato-

. ries, has been studying (and inventing) 
' graphical methods for data analysis and 
presentation for more than ten years. 

The second section is a how-to gem, 
: "Principles of Graph Construction." It 
should be required reading for all edu-
cated human beings. 

The third section deals with graphical 
methods and moves at times quite deeply 
into the domain of statistics. The nonspe-

. cialist can easily browse through this sec-
tion, taking as much as seems useful. 

Throughout the book Cleveland uses 
real data sets to illustrate copiously his dis-
cussion. This has the effect of making the 
book a fascinating read because he delves 
into actual scientific questions, e.g., do 
hamsters. who hibernate more live longer? 
In one case study, Cleveland reviews the 
complete 1980 volume of Science; the ma-
jority of articles (67 percent) contained 
graphs, almost four hundred in number. 
Nearly one-half of these graphs were 
flawed, one-third seriously so (something 
on the graph was not explained, for exam-
ple). Cleveland's own illustrations (com-
puter generated) are numerous and clear. 

The book closes with an admirable expo-
sition of the principles of graphic percep-
tion and cognition that bear on the con-
struction and comprehension of graphs. 
In some respects it might have been logical 
and useful for the book to begin with this 
material, but it probably does take on ad-
ditional meaning after one has thought in-
tently about graphs for more than two 
hundred pages. 

This book is a gem. Buy it, read it, and 
urge everyone you know whose job it is to 
convert raw data to meaningful informa-
tion to do the same.-Barbara Bartz Pet-
chenik, Cartographic Services, R. R. Donnel-
ley & Sons, Chicago, Illinois.