College and Research Libraries


hope that her interest in keeping it up to date 
will continue through many more revisions. 

In the absence of guides to the public docu-
ments of other nations and of international 
organizations as easily accessible and as com-
prehensive as Boyd's United States Govern-
ment Publications, librarians will find 
Brown's Manual of Government Publica-
tions very useful. T h e author, a professor 
of Political Science at the University of 
Michigan, has designed his handbook for the 
use of research workers or those interested in 
politics and it emphasizes tools for locating 
publications of use to these groups. 

Of the 17 chapters, nine are devoted to the 
United States, the ninth covering publications 
of state, municipal and local units of govern-
ment—the great uncharted wilderness of our 
public documents domain. Four chapters 
cover Great Britain and the British Com-

monwealth of Nations; one chapter covers 
Europe, including France, Germany, Austria, 
Soviet Russia, Italy and Ireland; and another 
single chapter is allotted to Latin America, 
the Near and Middle East, Japan and China. 
The international organizations whose pub-
lications are discussed are the League of Na-
tions, the Permanent Court of International 
Justice, the International Court of Justice 
and the United Nations. 

Obviously, in a handbook so slim as this 
with a scope so wide, only a few of the major 
series of publications can be mentioned specifi-
cally. Most of the references are to other 
bibliographic guides, but since these are fre-
quently difficult to locate readily this little 
handbook will be a very welcome addition to 
librarians as well as to political scientists.— 
Margaret E. Egan, Graduate Library School, 
University of Chicago. 

Old and N e w Scientific W o r k s 
A Catalogue of Incunabula and Manuscripts 

in the Army Medical Library. By Dorothy 
M . Schullian and Francis E. Sommer. Pub-
lished for T h e Honorary Consultants to 
the Army Medical Library by Henry 
Schuman, Inc. New York, 1950, 36ip. 
$15. 

Scientific, Medical and Technical Books, Pub-
lished in the United States of America. A 
Selected List of Titles in Print with Anno-
tations. Supplement of Books published 
1945-1948. Edited by R. R. Hawkins. 
Prepared under the direction of the Na-
tional Research Council's Committee on 
Bibliography of American Scientific and 
Technical Books. Washington ( N . Y . , R. 
R. Bowker Co.), 1950, 526p. $10. 
Here is a new reference tool for the his-

torian of science, and for those interested in 
fifteenth century books. It occupies a well-
deserved place beside its illustrious predeces-
sors in this field, Klebs, Osier, Sudhoff and 
Ballard. 

A Catalogue of Incunabula and Manu-
scripts in the Army Medical Library repre-
sents another example of the superb biblio-
graphic enterprises which we have come to 
expect from our National Medical Library. 
Instructors in the graphic arts will be happy 
to learn that lantern slides have been made 

of historically significant illustrations, title 
pages, printers' marks and other materials 
suitable for lectures based on the collection. 
T h e record of incunabula is of particular 
interest to scholars and librarians, for each 
has been microfilmed and is available for loan 
in that form. 

Young scholars in the history of science 
and civilization, following in the footsteps 
of Sarton and Thorndike, will have accessi-
bility denied to their predecessors. It is a 
pious hope that the disciples will utilize the 
material. 

T h e incunabula portion of the work is 
equipped with two concordances, Klebs and 
Stillwell. In addition, there is a general index 
of printers, places, owners, incidental names, 
variant forms of author names and dates. 

This volume has also a record of the 
western manuscripts in possession of the li-
brary. Part 2 of the work contains a record 
of their oriental manuscripts, predominantly 
Arabic. An index of names and titles en-
hances the checklist. 

This volume is one which every American 
library boasting a Rare Book Room will 
wish to have on its reference shelf. Printed 
by the Anthoensen Press, published by Schu-
man for the Honorary Consultants to the 
Army Medical Library, the volume is a fine 
example of book making. 

A P R I L . 1951 250 
15 7 



T h e Hawkins work is the long awaited 
supplement to the base volume which covered 
the period, 1930-1944. T h e purpose of the 
work is to supply descriptions of the out-
standing scientific, medical and technical books 
written by citizens of the United States and 
Canada, published in the United States dur-
ing the years 1945-1948. Citations are given 
for about 2600 books. 

T h e subject scope is indicated in the title, 
but there are certain exceptions. T h e social 
sciences are omitted, except for certain works 
in such fields as nursing and psychology, 

where some books which are listed are equally 
useful for sociological and technical informa-
tion. T h e selections on a given subject are 
intended to represent the books that would 
be available in a well-stocked American li-
brary with an active collection in that sub-
ject. T h e list is one of important and use-
ful books, rather than a list of "best" books. 
This publication and the one which it supple-
ments is a "must" for the general reference 
collection in any college or university, and an 
"absolute must" for every science library.— 
Thomas P. Fleming, Columbia University. 

Peter Schoeffer 
Peter Schoeffer of Gernsheim and Mainz, 

with a List of His Surviving Books and 
Broadsides. By Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt. 
Rochester, N . Y . , Leo Hart, 1950, 146P. 
$5.00. (No. 4 of the Printers' Valhalla 
series, edited by George Parker Winship.) 
Three names stand out in the story of the 

beginning of printing at M a i n z : Gutenberg, 
the inventor; Fust, the financier; and Schoef-
fer, the artist and craftsman. Schoeffer, the 
young assistant of Gutenberg and later, the 
son-in-law of Fust, is the subject of this 
attractive and surprisingly interesting mono-
graph by D r . Lehmann-Haupt. 

Probably a student (possibly of law) at 
the Sorbonne in 1449, he worked there as a 
calligrapher and a manuscript copyist. From 
Paris he went to Mainz, which is close to 
Gernsheim, his home, and became, an assistant 
to Gutenberg. But at the famous trial on 
Nov. 6, 1455, Schoeffer testified in favor of 
Fust who, awarded the decision, took away 
most of the inventor's printing materials. 

Next, we find Schoeffer operating a press, 
first with Fust, then by himself. His experi-
ence as a calligrapher, the evidence shows, 
aided him to become an excellent typecutter 
and book-designer. T h e beauty of his books 
has aroused the admiration of bookmen for 
nearly five centuries. 

It was but gradually that Peter Schoeffer 
broke away from his first practice of making 
his printed books follow the artistic standards 
of the manuscript. In these his earliest pro-
ductions Schoeffer's difficult color printing— 
whether or not we accept the reconstruction 
by Rudolph Ruzicka and by Heinrich W a l l a u 
(p.40-45) of its method—involved great 

technical problems. But slowly experience 
taught Schoeffer to think of typography as 
a new art, of the use of contrasting black 
and white, aided, when the individual pur-
chaser of the book desired it, by color added 
by the rubricator. 

Again, Schoeffer printed law books with 
their texts on balanced pages surrounded by 
commentary which referred to the pages en-
closed. Schoeffer, to be sure, could print from 
a manuscript which had the commentary sur-
rounding the text and could abbreviate or ex-
pand the spelling of his legal Latin copy—an 
expedient probably more easily employed than 
those suggested (p.48-49). Nevertheless 
this was a typographical feat requiring skill. 

Schoeffer was a clever and successful busi-
ness man who sold the books which he printed. 
Aided by an approximately complete unpub-
lished list of surviving Schoeffer imprints 
compiled by the Gesamtkatalog staff, which 
he obtained while serving with the U.S. Mili-
tary Government in Germany, D r . Lehmann-
Haupt is able to show how varied were his 
productions. Most bookmen know Schoeffer 
as a printer of stately missals and Bibles. 
But Schoeffer printed not only a considerable 
amount of theology and law, the classics and 
other serious works, but also a cookbook and 
a calendar. He also produced numerous 
items of job printing—the bulls of popes, proc-
lamations of the emperor, letters of the war-
ring claimants to the archdiocese of Mainz, 
indulgences, propoganda pieces against the 
T u r k s and even the announcement of a sport-
ing event of a municipally conducted cross-
bow tournament. 

Schoeffer, like a good business man, ad-

204 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES