ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


380/C&RL News

N ew
Publications

G eo rg e M. Eberha rt

The Best of O PL II: Se­
lected Readings from  The 
One P e rs o n  Library, a 
Newsletter f o r  Librarians 
and Management, edited 
by Andrew Berner and Guy 
St. Clair (336 pages, Febru­
ary 1996), offers practical ad­
vice to librarians who must 
singlehandedly manage an 
information center. Among 
the topics included are: ab­
senteeism in the OPL, over­
coming procrastination, the 
empowered librarian, disas­
ter planning, when unsolicited materials get out
o f hand, and promoting the reference collec­
tion. $43.50 (SLA members, $34.50). Special Li­
braries Assn., 1700 Eighteenth St., N.W., Wash­
ington, DC 20009-2508. ISBN 0-87111-438-0.

Blast from the Past: A  Pictorial History
o f Radio’s First 75 Years, by B. Eric Rhoads
(463 pages, January 1996), chronicles the radio
broadcasting industry from Marconi to Frasier
Crane. It’s ironic that the excitement o f a purely
audio medium is captured so well by the more
than 900 photographs in this book, many of
them discovered in personal collections by the
author and published here for the first time. 
Radio was the world’s first multimedia, how­
ever, with the visual imagery supplied by the
listener’s imagination, as Paul Harvey reminds
us in the introduction. The book’s commentary
is brief but substantial as it winds around the
many pictures and captions. A directory o f
museums, organizations, and publications de­
voted to radio history rounds out the text.

Correction
“There must be 50 ways to be a leader” 

( C&RLNews‚ April 1996) gave incorrect con­
tact information for the Kellogg Foundation 
National Fellowship. The Foundation can be 
reached at 1 Michigan Ave. East, Battle 
Creek, MI 49107; (6 l6 ) 968-1611. The e-mail 
address o f the author, Judy Reynolds, was 
missing a letter; the correct e-mail address 
is judyr@sjsuvml.sjsu.edu. The editors re­
gret the errors.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

$39.95. Streamline Press, 224 
Datura St., Suite 718, West 
Palm Beach, FL 33401. ISBN 
1-886745-06-4.

Brief Tests of Collection 
Strength: A Methodology 
fo r All Types o f Libraries, 
by Howard D. White (191 
pages, September 1995), 
describes the use o f a rela­
tively brief test to assign li­
braries a score for existing 
collection strength in a par­
ticular subject area. The test 

draws on both expert human judgment and 
holdings from the OCLC union catalog. White 
exhibits the results o f hundreds o f trials in many 
different subjects at dozens o f American librar­
ies and provides a scheme for giving test de­
signers greater control over the difficulty o f brief 
tests. $55.00. Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road 
West, Westport, CT 06881-5007. ISBN 0-313- 
29753-3.

C a n a d ia n  B u s in e s s  H a n d b o o k , by 
Vivienne Monty (304 pages, February 1996), is 
a practical guide for setting up a small business 
in Canada. Monty, senior librarian at York Uni­
versity and former president o f the Canadian 
Library Association, offers some tips that are 
valid for businesses in any country— market­
ing and sales cost-cutting techniques, a finan­
cial reality test, negotiating a franchise con­
tract— and much o f the material will be useful 
for U.S. firms doing business with Canadian 
companies. $34.95 Canadian. CCH Canadian, 
Ltd., 6 Garamond Court, North York, Ontario, 
Canada M3C 1Z5. ISBN 1-55141-753-7.

The G rea t Comet Crash: The Collision of 
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Jupiter, ed­
ited by John R. Spencer and Jacqueline Mitton 
(118 pages, September 1995), documents the 
cometary collision o f July 1994 with abundant 
astronomical images and speculation on what 
might have happened if Earth had been the 
target. The fact that the zones o f destruction on

George Eberhart is editor and compiler of The 
W hole Library Handbooks f o r  ALA Editions (1991, 
1995). He was editor o f C&RL News from  1980 to 
1990.

mailto:judyr@sjsuvml.sjsu.edu


June 1996/381

Jupiter greatly exceeded the size o f our own 
planet (despite nearly everyone’s predictions 
to the contrary) dramatized the need to take 
such collisions or near-collisions very seriously. 
The salient facts o f comet SL9 are summarized 
here— including the estimation that the object 
had begun to orbit Jupiter sometime between 
1914 and 1930. An eye-opening object lesson 
that reminds us o f the dynamics o f the solar 
system and our vulnerability to extraterrestrial 
forces. $24.95. Cambridge University Press, 40 
W. 20th St., N ew  York, NY 10011-4211. ISBN 
0-521-48274-7.

N ightsong: Perform ance, P o w e r, an d  
Practice in South Africa, by Veit Erlmann (446 
pages, 1996), describes the politics and prov­
enance o f isicathamiya music in South Africa, 
the unaccompanied vocal song that gained in­
ternational recognition through the efforts o f 
Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo in 
the 1980s. Erlmann starts with the roots o f the 
music which, like American jazz, sprung from 
minstrel shows and ragtime. He goes on to 
examine its contemporary power in Zulu soci­
ety and the forces that shaped it. An extensive 
discography and bibliography supplement the 
text. $75.00. University o f Chicago Press, 11030 
S. Langley Ave., Chicago, IL 60628. ISBN 0-226- 
21720-5.

W eathering the Storm: T ornadoes, Tele­
vision, and Turm oil, by Gary A. England 
(225 pages, 1996), 
contains veteran 
w ea th er fo r e ­
caster England’s 
reminiscences o f 
his career at sta­
tion  K W T V  in 
O klah om a City 
and describes his 
efforts to obtain 
Doppler radar so 
that the residents 
o f “Tornado A l­
ley” might have 
more time to seek 
shelter from dangerous storms. Fifty-five color 
photographs o f midwestern twisters punctuate 
his meteorological memoirs, which are as much 
about tempestuous TV politics as tornadoes. 
Anecdotal but informative. $26.95. University 
o f Oklahoma Press, 1005 Asp Ave., Norman, 
OK 73019. ISBN 0-8061-2823-2. ■