College and Research Libraries


spective," provides an excellent model 
for developing a literature collection. Al-
though the article is about Australian 
literature, it should be read by anyone 
charged with building a collection of lit-
erature, regardless of its source. It is also 
an excellent guide to current sources on 
Australian literature. 

Several articles also provide informa-
tion on Australian collections outside 
Australia. Two articles describe Australian 
collections in Great Britain: one is about 
the British Library and the other treats 
materials supporting Australian studies in 
other British libraries. Unfortunately, 
there is no similar article on Australian 
collections in American libraries. 

There are some major weaknesses in 
the volume. As Brown's article states, 
''The Australian publishing output rep-
resents only a small percentage (almost 
certainly less than 5%) of the world's an-
nual English-language publishing out-
put." Missing from this volume is a 
rationale for why American libraries 
should spend their limited resources on 
this five percent. Also, an article providing 
a current summary of Australian research 
and scholarship would have been a useful 
addition. There is too much emphasis on 
Australian literature- an important area 
of interest to American libraries but by no 
means the only one. There is also a sig-
nificant overlap among the articles. For 
example, the publication Australian 
Government Publications is mentioned in 
five separate essays, none of which gives 
a totally accurate description of it. 

The major drawback of the work for 
American librarians (with the notable 
exception of the Atkinson article) is the 
lack of evaluative guidance for selection. 
Knowledge of the selection sources is 
valuable but by itself does not provide 
the information on how to build a collec-
tion. The book's aim is to "encourage 
dialogue among those libraries around 
the world which seek to collect publica-
tions from and about Australia." This is 
an admirable goal but not enough to 
justify the purchase of this book (with its 
$80 price) for other than library science 
collections, libraries wishing to build 
Australian collections, and the largest 

Book Reviews 183 

research libraries.-William Z. Schenck, 
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 

Crawford, Walt. The Online Catalog Book: 
Essays and Examples. New York: G. K. Hall, 
1992. 560p. alk. paper, $35 OSBN 0-8161-
1995-3), $50 (ISBN 0-8161-1996-1). 
This volume begins with eleven essays 

by Walt Crawford on the elements of 
online catalog design. For libraries of all 
types, these essays cover the full range of 
issues raised by this topic. They are com-
plemented, and challenged, by a series of 
thirty-two presentations of various elec-
tronic catalogs prepared by their 
developers and/ or users. A more readable, 
complete treatment of the current state of 
online catalogs is difficult to imagine. 

Crawford, a senior analyst at the Re-
search Libraries Group, is a highly re-
spected author in the field of library 
technology. His purpose in writing and 
compiling The Online Catalog Book is "to 
discuss current issues in catalog design 
·and to offer existing catalogs as sources 
of ideas for new and revised catalogs." 
Many of the ideas presented in the es-
says cover topics he has addressed 
before in writings and conference pre-
sentations, but they are brought together 
here in one volume and updated. The 
more traditional design aspects of online 
catalogs are covered well, and several of 
the chapters are quite forward-looking, 
addressing such issues as the implica-
tions of remote use, the integration of 
document delivery services, and the ad-
dition of local databases, community in-
formation, full text, gateways and 
images to the catalog. Two related and 
important themes emerge in the series of 
essays: the appropriateness of designing 
catalogs from the user's perspective, and 
the lack of a single answer about how to 
do it best. Crawford notes, " ... by now, it 
should be clear that this book won't say, 
'Good online catalogs look like this and 
work like that."' His biases are always 

· noted and are quite clear. Readers are 
urged to become familiar with the litera-
ture and to draw their own conclusions 
based on careful review of research, ex-
perience and real examples, and library 
users' needs. 



184 College & Research Libraries 

Over half the book is devoted to pro-
viding examples of real online catalogs. 
Contributions were sought from all 
possible systems; guidelines were pro-
vided for the content and format of the 
submissions. The thirty-two responses re-
ceived cover systems from integrated li-
brary system vendors such as DRA, 
Innovative Interfaces, and Dynix; locally 
developed systems such as those at Univer-
sity of California, Dartmouth, and Univer-
sity of Texas; and smaller CD-ROM-based 
systems such as Marcive, Follett Software, 
and Winnebago. Libraries whose catalogs 
are featured include academic, public, 
school, and special. Each contribution is 
twelve to fourteen pages in length, usu-
ally containing three to five pages of text, 
and twenty to thirty screens. The focus is 
on the user interface in conducting 
several sample searches or alternatives 
prescribed by Crawford. 

There is real value in being able to 
view and understand how users of all 
these different catalogs interact with the 
catalog. The range of catalogs repre-
sented exceeds what would be possible 
by sampling catalogs available on the 
Internet. The collection, in conjunction 
with the essays, makes it easy to com-
pare and contrast approaches to catalog 
design. The text adds to the understand-
ing of how, and sometimes why, the cat-
alog works. Every library will have to 
give thought in the future to a new on-
line catalog, whether it be its first, a re-
placement for or a rethinking of an 
existing one, or an enhanced catalog 
with a broader scope. The Online Catalog 
Book makes it possible to sample broadly 
the efforts of many libraries and vendors 
and to put into context the wide-ranging 
design questions that must be ad-
dressed.-Flo Wilson, Vanderbilt Univer-
sity, Nashville, Tennessee. 

Russian Libraries in Transition: An An-
thology of Glasnost Literature. Ed. by 
Dennis Kimmage. Jefferson, N.C.: 
McFarland, 1992. 214p. $32.50 (ISBN 
0-89950-718-2). 
For decades, the Soviet library world 

was under the ironclad control of the 
Communist Party. Through a highly cen-

tralized network extending to the local 
library, the Party exercised complete con-
trol over collection policies, processing, 
and reader services. Even books published 
under a previous Soviet re-gime were 
often ordered removed from the shelves 
because a later ruler's method and ideo-
logical stance were different from his pred-
ecessor's. The well-known example of the 
mandatory excision of the article on 
Lavrenti Beria and its replacement by 
one on the Bering Sea in the Great Soviet 
Encyclopedia epitomizes the type of 
complete control the party exercised 
over libraries and librarians. 

Ironically, although the library was 
abstractly regarded as an important part 
of Communist propaganda and ideology, 
librarians and library facilities were not. 
Library buildings were not well main-
tained, inadequate space and working 
conditions were a common complaint, li-
brary education was heavy on ideology 
and light on other content, and librarians 
were poorly paid and poorly treated. 

With the ad vent of Gorbachev' s policy 
of glasnost, or openness, previously 
muted voices in the library world have 
been raised against the corrosive effects of 
party control over libraries and librarians. 
As more people have spoken and written 
without repression about the terrible con-
ditions, inadequate support, and mind-
less censorship and as more deficiencies 
in library policies and facilities have been 
uncovered, dissident opinions have begun 
to be published in mainstream library pe-
riodicals and non-Party library associa-
tions have been formed. 

It is the excitement of this period of 
change that Dennis Kimmage has cap-
tured so well in this anthology of library 
glasnost literature. As he writes, "The 
selections in this anthology reflect an im-
portant part of a spiritual rebirth that we 
can all share, that presents not only 
librarians but Americans from all walks 
of life with an extraordinary opportunity 
for meaningful interaction and cross-
cultural influence." 

The anthology consists of Soviet news-
paper and journal articles arranged in 
three parts. Each is preceded by a brief 
essay, written by Kimmage, that serves