College and Research Libraries Review Articles Documentation in Germany Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Dokumentation. Die Dokumentation und ihre Probleme. Vortrage . . . der Ersten Tagung der D eutschen Gesellschaft fiir Dokumenta- tion vom 21. bis 24. September 194.2 in Salzburg. Leipzig, Harrassowitz, 1943, 205 p. il. index. T h e Schweizerlexikon ( 1 9 4 6 ) , after giving perhaps the most satisfactory definition of the word "Dokumentation" and after a short historical note, lists a number of significant references including among others the publi- cations of the International Institute of Bib- liography at Bruxelles, the communications of the International Federation of Documenta- tion at T h e Hague, and as the last title the volume under review. Only recently has this work become avail- able to students outside of Europe and, al- though six years will soon have passed since the meeting at Salzburg occurred which is documented in it, many librarians, archivists, and research men in general will want to be made aware of the manifestations of intellec- tual cooperation and planning in the other camp. A quotation from one of the eighteen papers printed in this work, written by Walther Parey, then executive secretary of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, may indi- cate the spiritual tenor in which this small group of "documentalists" met at Salzburg in September 1942: " I f carried on in the spirit of service and assistance to the community ( = G e m e i n s c h a f t ) , not for its own sake but as an important aid to scientific labor, docu- mentation, among other forces, is destined to bring about reasonable efficiency in intellec- tual labors; then too, it will be capable, some day again, of helping to reduce beneficially the burden upon the intellectual workers, which has increased beyond capacity." (p. 84) It would probably be unwise to see in this statement much more than an expression of the increasingly common general mood pre- vailing during the recent stages of the so- called industrial revolution. T r u e , at the time of the Salzburg meeting, the participants as well as their colleagues around the globe worked under the pressure of war conditions. Yet the naive assumptions revealed by some of the apparently loyal servants of the Nazi state present, and the equally honest ex- pressions of liberal and even international views on the part of others appear to indi- cate that at this level of effort or in this quarter of the European intelligentsia, hardly faint rumblings were apprehended of the turn- ing of fate, so clearly seen already at that time by such men as General Beck and his group. One may begin to fathom the depth of the tragedy and sense the marionette- like quality of a meeting such as this, when one reads in Hans Bernd Gisevius' Bis zum Bitteren Ende, of the movements and plans taking shape in the general headquarters of the home army born from genuine despair and intended to stem the tide from within. It is extremely doubtful whether any of those men at Salzburg had the slightest real knowl- edge of these attempts behind the swiftly changing scenes of the visible stage, up to this time a continuous series of successes. T h e meeting of the Gesellschaft, though sponsored by the authorities, was little more than an extended council meeting. T h o u g h "hervorragende Fachleute des europaischen Auslandes" were said to be present, only Germans are reported as authors of the papers recorded. T h e aim of the meeting was to attempt systematization of objectives and procedures of the Gesellschaft, which had been founded as a successor to the G e r - man Committee on Standardization for L i - braries, Books, and Periodicals. Another stated objective was to continue and possibly improve upon the w o r k of the International Federation of Documentation. Among the authors are five librarians. T h r e e of these are well-known beyond the German borders: Fritz Prinzhorn, Danzig, who functioned as chairman at the meeting, Sigmund von Frauendorfer, Rome, and Ru- dolf Juchhoff, f o r a number of years head of the Auskunstsbiiro and of the D . G . K . T h e thirteen other contributors are distributed ac- cording to their professional functions as f o l l o w s : two archivists, one of them Ernst 180 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES Zipfel, then the national archivist; one repre- sentative of museums, Director Kohlhaussen of the National Museum at Nurnberg; Chr. Caselmann of the Ministry of Education; M . Pfliicke, deputy chairman of the German Chemical Society and editor in chief of the Chemisches Zentralblatt, who acted as vice chairman at the meeting; Walther Parey, executive secretary of the German Society of Engineers; W . Gravell, a director of the Central Statistics Office; R. Immel, a division head of International Institute of Forestry, Berlin; a medical administrator, R. Pfaffen- berg; one representative each of the Agfa and Zeiss-Ikon corporations; and finally, a radio executive and an archival expert of the M i n - istry of Propaganda. In the following an attempt is made to characterize the contributions in the order in which they appear in the book. Prinzhorn, in his role as chairman, essays an exposition of basic problems and tendencies. H e underlines the dynamic nature of docu- mentation pointed out by van Riemsdijk the year before in Communication 8 of the F . I . D . H e predicts that, having had its origin in the technical and social sciences, documentation is bound to affect all areas of systematic in- tellectual endeavor. W i t h such men as Godet, Lemaitre, and Dahl he does not ex- pect complete inclusion in the process of the large general research libraries. H e predicts that, and how they will have to be brought in through their special collections. T o American documentalists it will be of interest to hear that as a practical way of reaching over-all efficiency in the distribution of re- sources he suggests organization and delimi- tation of individual depositories first. Re- peatedly it is brought out that most successful and thorough documentation is possible only in special libraries, which are tied up with abstracting services. W h a t Prinzhorn has to say on adequate periodical collections (his specialty), on special collections and their c o - operative care, on need for better statistics, better organization of bibliographical and ab- stracting services, then on the need for tying into the general documentation scheme such relatively neglected and recent media as archives, museums, picture and film collec- tions as well as newspapers and sound record- ings furnishes a background for some of the papers to follow and points toward future goals. T h e author ends by stressing the need for developing special areas cooperatively, whereupon the over-all problems may be tackled more wisely and gaps may be closed with more assurance of adequacy, nationally and internationally . T h e four following papers deal with archives, museums, picture and film collec- tions, and sound recordings. They do little more than provide very instructive and en- lightening general descriptions of the ma- terials involved, of the methods by which they have been created, organized, and made avail- able up to this time. One could hardly ex- pect more from these relatively new areas; what is presented is a minimum core of knowledge necessary to a successful participa- tion in a general documentation program. In Zipfel's contribution on archives two statements interest particularly. A f t e r trac- ing the historical evolution of present-day archival administration, with due acknowl- edgment of the decisive French influence, the author asserts with pride that "today the ac- cessions of the state archives, except for records of the most recent times, are available to any student and amateur without restric- tions'^ !) Then he outlines the research proj- ects under way, which are intended to main- tain the high standards of the publications of the Prussian archives. H e frankly discusses the " W e s t p l a n " (there is also an " O s t p l a n " ) , already partly completed at the time. T h i s project has as its aim a complete inventory of the sources of German history found in Belgian, Danish, Dutch, and French archives. H . Kohlhaussen divulges very interesting views on the nature and purpose of museum collections, but does little more than empha- size the difficulty of systematizing these and using them for general documentation. Chr. Caselmann has pedagogical views on the scientific film and its use. O n the other hand, he has a great deal of useful informa- tion on the production, organization, and conditions of use of the extensive film col- lection under immediate and indirect control of the Ministry of Education. H e also stresses the relative lack of knowledge and of finding media regarding pictorial collections. H . Dominik describes the various proc- esses of making sound recordings. W h e n he reports on the extensive collection of matrices in the central archives of sound records main- APR1L t 1948 181 tained by the Reichsrundfunk, one becomes curious to know whether this unique record of the recent past has come to us intact. O f more than passing interest is the suggestion that the records produced by the magnetic process, which are possessed of superior tone fidelity, may be more permanent than was first assumed. T e n contributions on documentation in spe- cial fields follow. A m o n g them, those by Walther Gravell on statistical documentation, Hans Richter on social documentation (actua- ally descriptive of the labor front library brought together by pillage) and by Rudolf Pfaffenberg on medical documentation, are likely of most interest to students of the aims and methods of the Nazi state. Y e t , even here close scrutiny may reveal useful hints, as for instance the use of documentation in combating epidemics and other diseases. T h e other papers throughout are of high professional caliber, and merit the attention of specialists and documentalists generally. Maximilian Pfliicke discusses f r o m a high plane of objectivity documentation as de- veloped in chemistry, one of its oldest spheres of application. T h i s study is appropriately adorned with a portrait of Gustav T h e o d o r Fechner, the founder of the Chemische Zen- tralblatt. Walther Parey does an equally instructive job for technology. W o r t h mentioning spe- cially is his belief that the method of choos- ing reviewers in the field as practiced by German abstracting journals results in a product superior to that achieved by com- parable American institutions using per- manent office staffs. An important contribu- tion is further a classification of types of engineers (research, development, patent, con- struction, plant engineers) and the observa- tion that this vertical differentiation to- gether with the horizontal distinction of fields of engineering such as civil, mechanical, chemical, electrical, and others makes it clear that centralized documentation is hardly pos- sible in this area. Impressive is Parey's statement that German engineers had at their disposal the "greatest technical library in the w o r l d , " the German Patent Office, which in 1940 had 400,000 volumes of books and a collection of around 10,000,000 descriptions of patents, all of which was administered by a force of 600 academically-trained experts. T h a t this great reservoir was not thorough- ly integrated into a general documentation system, may well have meant failure in a number of important objectives. Wilhelm Giilich and Fritz Hellwig make valuable contributions to the subject in the economic sphere. Whereas the former en- ters into a searching analysis of the aims and methods of economic research, the latter gives a most interesting description of archi- val establishments in the economic structure of central Europe, especially of Germany. Archivists will want to know that German archivists have recognized the value of cata- loging archival materials rather thoroughly, with numerous cross references, though of course they still adhere strictly to the prin- ciples of "respect des fonds" and of " p r o - venience" in the arrangement of the records themselves. American colleagues will sym- pathize with the statement that during the war the German archivists were confined largely to hoping that offices would continue to transfer their records, that no valuable materials were sold for old paper and that air raid protection would prove effective. Sigmund von Frauendorfer and Richard Immel give very thorough and vivid accounts of their respective fields, i.e., agriculture and forestry. V o n Frauendorfer's contribution in agriculture is well-known in the U . S. T h e more recent rapid strides in the documenta- tion of forestry were first summarized by F. Griinwoldt in 1940. R. Immel brings the account up to date. Rudolf Juchoff deals with the historical sciences and uses the opportunity to point out that the humanities have known the basic meaning of documentation for a long time. In support he cites a definition from the Grande Encyclopedie 1870 and mentions a number of important handbooks such as Iwan Miiller's Handbuch for classical archaeology and Paul's Grundriss for Germanistic studies. However, he concedes that generally the humanistic and also, to a lesser degree, the exact sciences are still proceeding at a more leisurely pace. O n e area which he classifies apparently with humanistic studies, seems to him to approach the speed of reporting in technology, that of cultural geography (in Germany especially Landeskunde and A u s - landskunde). O n one example, Triepel's Hegemonie and the research behind it, the 182 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES author shows then, that though differing from technological documentation in speed, in es- sence the process is the same in humanistic research. H e succeeds, it appears, in con- vincing the reader that "Documentation is . . . at best hard necessity . . . and that all documentation has the same objective: econ- omy in intellectual production." T h r e e final papers are concerned with photo- graphic reproduction and microphotography. Erich Mehne discusses microphotography from the archivist's angle and suggests that filming is the best method f o r quick preser- vation of materials and that permanent pres- ervation is best insured by reproduction on glass plates, supplemented by multiple storage in air conditioned rooms, with diapositives for control. For most efficient use of a photographically reproduced collection he ad- vocates, in preference to film rolls and film strips, arrangement of film sections with in- dividual documents on 9 x 12 cm. cards, which are labeled and may be systematically orga- nized ( = Plan-oder Blattfilmverfahren). O f reading machines Mehne demands these qualities: simple handling, possibility of re- enlargement, cheapness of construction for mass-consumption. W a l t h e r Rahts goes into detail about the methods of copying records and books by filming, contact-printing, and reflex photog- raphy. H e too advocates the use of the Blattfilm method for convenient collecting and arrangement of film materials, standard- ized to 2 x 9 pages on 9 x 12 cm. cards. H e reports on an interesting departure in copying construction elements from a draw- ing, scale 1:6, into a drawing, scale 1 '.4, which resulted in a saving of time of over 500 per cent. Hermann Joachim reports on a number of cameras used in photographic reproduction as well as on novel reading devices. Among the latter is a reading machine which is equipped with a film holder in front and below the reading surface, and which has a light source outside of the machine to keep it from heating the apparatus. Joachim's article is illustrated by four plates, and the reading machine mentioned can be seen on one of them. If the reviewer were asked to point out a few outstanding qualities in the work, he might mention these t w o : first the emphasis on international cooperation on the part of a number of the contributors, notably the agriculturalist von Frauendorfer and the forester Richard I m m e l ; second, the insist- ence of finding effective means of conditioning the various types of users of the products of documentation through various means of formal and informal training, at length dis- cussed by von Frauendorfer and also by the engineer, Walther Parey. A cursory analysis such as this review can at best attempt to interest potential readers. Perhaps the book should be translated if only to incorporate it more securely in the ap- paratus of the Western documentalist and to make possible a more generally fair and sympathetic appraisal. For, " H e r e ye strike but splintered hearts together—there, ye shall strike unsplinterable glasses!" ( H . M e l - v i l l e . ) — I c k o Iben, University of Illinois. Bookbinding Bookbinding, Its Background and Technique. By Edith Diehl, N e w Y o r k and T o r o n t o , Rinehart and Co., Inc., 1946. 2v. Miss Diehl has made a useful contribution in Volume I ( T h e Background), wherein she traces the broad outlines of developments in the practice of bookbinding since its inception, and analyzes the principal characteristics of the major styles in bookbinding decoration. Considering the necessary restrictions on space, no work of such scope can hope to be encyclopedic, and Miss Diehl makes no claim that her essay represents the exception. Nevertheless, she has performed a valuable service, for which students and connoisseurs will be grateful, by presenting a selective bib- liography of bookbinding literature that will take the serious investigator more deeply into special phases of the subject. Although the bibliography itself makes no attempt to evalu- ate the works listed, in many instances Miss Diehl's textual comment provides the care- ful reader with the necessary critical clues. Earlier investigators into bookbinding deco- ration habitually sought to strengthen their arguments by arbitrarily linking the major APR1L t 1948 183