College and Research Libraries


plain, get the thing done, let them howl." 
If, like Moses, Kirkland never did fully 
learn how to delegate authority he never-
theless seemed to learn with J o w e t t never 
to make the same mistake the second time. 
H e doubtless knew that one who occupies 
a college or university presidency in the 
United States holds an almost impossible 
post and is bound to make some mistakes; 
but the best that the best of such officers 
can hope for is to avoid making any 
but small mistakes.—Edgar TV. Knight, 
University of North Carolina, Chapel 
Hill. 

Too Much College, or Education Is Eat-
ing Up Life. . . . Stephen Leacock. 
Dodd, Mead, 1940. 255p. $2. 
" E D U C A T I O N is eating up life" is the 

theme of this, Stephen Leacock's latest 
humorous sally against the windmills of 
formal education.  W e spend too much 
time and money, he claims, and too much 
of our valuable youth, acquiring the di-
plomas—the formal insignia of modern 
education—and too little preparation for 
the real work of life. By making us 
laugh, he makes us listen, using half-truths 
in argument for, as he says, "a half-truth 
—like a half brick, carries better." 

Economics, asserts Leacock, is a mass 
of technical verbiage; psychology, "the 
black a r t , " a parasite battening upon phi-
losophy, art, and science; the educational 
value of Latin is overlooked; teaching of 
foreign languages is a f a r c e ; modern Eng-
lish spelling is illogical; mathematics, a 
series of "puzzles" bearing little relation 
to reality. 

Although he laughs as he talks, we 
know that this keen, kindly jokester is 
a friendly critic who might well be taken 
seriously.—Morris A. Gelfand, Queens 
College Library, Flushing, N.Y. 

The Acquisition and Cataloging of Books; 
Papers Presented before the Library In-
stitute at the University of Chicago, 
July 29 to August 9, 194.0. Edited by 
William  M . Randall, with an introduc-
tion by Louis  R . Wilson. T h e Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1940. ( T h e 
University of Chicago Studies in Li-
brary Science) x, 4o8p. $2.50. 
T H E R E A S O N S for the decision to de-

vote the 1940 Library Institute, the fifth 
annual institute sponsored by the G r a d u -
ate Library School of the University of 
Chicago with the financial assistance of 
the Carnegie Corporation of N e w York, to 
the subject of the acquisition and catalog-
ing of books—the so-called "technical 
processes"—are enumerated by Dean Louis 
R. Wilson in his introduction to this col-
lection of the papers presented at the 
institute.  I n the case of the acquisition 
process there are four reasons: ( 1 ) the 
present war and the rising importance of 
America as the preserver of the records of 
civilization, ( 2 ) the reduction of library 
budgets with little prospect of any great 
increase in the immediate future, ( 3 ) the 
growing realization of the necessity of co-
operative acquisition programs and division 
of fields between libraries, and ( 4 ) the 
recent spectacular developments in micro-
photography.  I n the case of classification 
and cataloging, there are likewise four 
reasons for the decision: ( 1 ) the lack of 
funds, ( 2 ) the shift of interest from cata-
loging as an end in itself to cataloging as 
a service, ( 3 ) the growth of union catalogs 
and bibliographical centers, and ( 4 ) the 
new developments in photography as ap-
plied to library records. 

T h e papers themselves, numbering 
seventeen in all, have been edited by P r o f . 
William  M . Randall, w h o is also the 
author of the opening paper on the tech-

JUNE, 1941 251