College and Research Libraries


Guide to Propaganda, Communication, and Public Opinion 
Propaganda, Communication, and Public 

Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference 
Guide. By Bruce Lannes Smith, Harold D . 
Lasswell, and Ralph D . Casey. Princeton, 
Princeton University Press, 1946. x, 435p. 
Together with an earlier volume by the 

same team of authors in 1935 under the title 
Propaganda and Promotional Activities, this 
constitutes the most elaborate annotated bibli-
ography in the rapidly growing field of mass 
communication. T h e 2600 titles listed in the 
present volume cover publications from mid-
J934 to M a r c h 1943, and a substantial propor-
tion of these are briefly annotated with re-
spect to salient subject matter and social 
attributes of the author. As a guide to the 
major publications in this sphere, it has sev-
eral distinctive advantages. Its plan of classi-
fication is such as to allow the reader to 
locate the specific materials he may be seeking 
in any specialized division of the larger field. 
Further aid to the location of bibliographic 
items is provided by elaborate author and 
subject indexes running to some 4500 separate 
entries. In a substantial proportion of cases, 
the reader is referred to biographical direc-
tories in which further information about se-
lected authors is available. Insofar as it 
bears upon mass communications, the bibliog-
raphy is clearly comprehensive, with no con-
spicuous oversights. 

Precisely because the volume has so much 
to commend it, detailed attention should be 
given to its occasional shortcomings. First of 
all, the bibliography suffers from the defects 
of its qualities. T h e compilers have evidently 
ranged widely in many diverse literatures to 
collect hundreds of items which have only a 
tangential bearing upon mass communications. 
T h e very catholicity of the compilation less-
ens its specific usefulness. A t times, the most 
germane items threaten to be swallowed up 
by those of questionable relevance. T h e neo-
phyte may be confused when he explores a 
bibliography on propaganda, communication, 
and public opinion to find himself confronted 
(and I chose from a much more extended 
list) by references to works on fiscal policy 
and business cycles, the red army, a statistical 
yearbook of the trade in arms and ammuni-
tion, the city, the American college graduate, 

and economic differentials in the probability of 
insanity. N o w each of these works may be 
excellent in its own right, and the bibliog-
raphers may have attempted, properly enough, 
to avoid parochialism in their choice of ma-
terials, but the result is that these distantly 
related and dubiously collateral references 
constitute too large a proportion of the whole. 
A t least, that is the judgment of this one 
reader. It would seem preferable to segre-
gate these vaguely contextual sources from 
the materials dealing most directly with the 
ostensible subject-matter of the field under 
consideration. 

T h e r e is, further, the appraisal of four 
prefatory essays on "the science of mass com-
munication" (which run to about a fourth of 
the t e x t ) . Following the organization of the 
bibliography, these essays are centered on the 
communicator, the channels and the content 
of communication, and its effects upon audi-
ences. Presumably, these essays are designed 
to serve the admirable purpose of orienting 
others than the specialist in mass communica-
tion to the chief elements and structure of 
the field. T h e essays themselves are of dis-
tinctly uneven quality. 

T h e account of the channels of communica-
tion, particularly the press and radio, by Ralph 
Casey is competent, well-organized and all too 
brief. H e traces changes in the widening and 
deeping avenues of communication within the 
contexts of a developing democratic social 
structure, technological changes, and cumula-
tive urbanization. His exposition gives evi-
dence of an intimate and analytical knowledge 
of the field, as reflected, for example, in his 
treatment of the consolidation and integration 
of the mass media. 

T h e essay by B. L . Smith on "the political 
communication specialist of our times," on the 
other hand, is heavily crowded with infelicities 
of various sorts. T h e greater part of the 
discussion is based upon six distinct tabula-
tions based upon a grand total of sixteen 
cases (i.e. the heads of state of eight major 
powers and their propaganda ministers). One 
must agree with the author that this account 
involves "a provisional classification of highly 
insufficient data" and one may go further to 
question the worth of setting out the results 

372 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH. LIBRARIES 



on estimated incomes, occupations, and educa-
tion of the fathers of these sixteen individuals, 
their own exposure to "authoritative symbols 
of society," etc. It is a little disconcerting to 
find this slender base subjected to computa-
tions of percentages (to one and two deci-
mals) just as it is distressing to read some of 
the ad hoc interpretations of the career-lines 
of these "political communication specialists." 

Harold D . Lasswell, who, to the best of my 
knowledge, coined the now current term " c o n -
tent analysis," and who has contributed so 
largely to the development of this field, sets 
out the functions and the chief techniques f o r 
analyzing the content of communications. 
This compact and economical account, utiliz-
ing a series of concrete instances of content 
analysis should serve to acquaint the reader 
with the essential problems and procedures. 

T h e final introductory essay, also by P r o -
fessor Lasswell, deals with the "effects of 
communications." It is largely and inevitably 
devoted to a critical account of how the effects 
of communications might be studied since this 
division of the field contains strikingly few 
rigorous or systematic researches. 

Whatever its limitations, the fact remains 
that no other bibliographic guide to mass com-
munications approximates the value of the 
Smith-Lasswell-Casey volume. Since its ap-
pearance, the field has been growing at a rate 
considerably higher than that in the period 
covered by their book. Librarians, communi-
cations specialists, and interested laymen 
would all be benefited were the same team 
of authors to publish the third volume of their 
work in the near future.—Robert K. Merton, 
Columbia University. 

Modular Planning 
Modular Planning for College and Small 

University Libraries. By Donald E. Bean 
and Ralph E. Ellsworth. [ I o w a City, I o w a ] 
Privately printed by the authors, 1948. 
5 3 P -

So-called "modular" planning for libraries 
has been talked about, and written about to a 
lesser extent, f o r more than ten years. T h e 
idea has been given impetus since the end of 
the war by the deliberations of the Coopera-
tive Committee on Library Buildings, by the 
1946 Institute of the Graduate Library School 
of the University of Chicago, and by speeches 
and addresses at library meetings. T h e 
present volume, in its introduction and gen-
eral comments, and in the basic plans included, 
attempts to be of practical assistance to those 
librarians who have already become interested 
through the more theoretical discussions which 
have appeared in print. It succeeds very well. 
It is difficult to say much more than this about 
a volume of this character. 

It would be possible, of course, to produce 
here another essay on modular construction 
itself. Y o u r reviewer has been a more or less 
active proponent of the idea since about 1937, 
wThen Alfred M . Githens, the architect, called 
upon him at the University of Chicago with 
plans for a building of this type which, alas, 
was never built. But such an essay would be 
out of place here, since it could not but 

duplicate in essence what the authors of the 
present volume have said very well indeed. 
They have listed clearly the advantages of 
modular construction. If they have not 
pointed out its disadvantages, it is probably 
because they do not exist except in theory and 
in the minds of a few die-hard conservatives, 
or with those who have axes to grind, like the 
representative of a company which manufac-
tures multi-tier stacks who called upon me a 
few days ago. 

Attention should be called, however, to two 
points which the authors make which have 
nothing to do with modular construction 
itself. T h e first of these is the emphasis they 
place upon the necessity f o r understanding 
between the librarian and the architect which 
will make it possible f o r the librarian to 
explain what is needed clearly enough so that 
the architect can translate these needs into 
steel and stone. M r . Githens made this same 
point in his very admirable paper before the 
Graduate Library School Institute in 1946. 
It is one which needs constant emphasis. 
Proper use of the book under review will at 
least help the librarian to do this. 

T h e other point is much more specific, but 
not much less important. It is the warning 
the authors sound against rule-of-thumb 
methods of determining space needs. Their 
emphasis on the effect of room shape and 

OCTOBER, 1948 
35 7