College and Research Libraries


each four-month's period, the student will 
have quick, convenient access to the published 
surveys of opinion on any subject from the 
beginning of systematic sample surveys of 
citizens down to the present. A s the span 
of years lengthens during which surveys are 
reported, the historian or social analyst will 
have for his use an increasingly reliable in-
dex of the complexion, direction, ebb and flow 
of conscious, expressed opinion on public is-
sues and social interests. 

T h e reliability of the results of the polls 
themselves is a matter of continued, intensive 
study by experts in the field as w e l l as by in-
formed and uninformed critics from the out-
side. T h e editors of Public Opinion 1935-
1946 do not discuss the methodology employed 
in the surveys they report, except to indicate 
the usual sample size employed by each of the 
polling organizations represented in the 
volume. F o r the rest, w e are obliged to take 
on faith the zeal of the pollsters in perfect-
ing their techniques for drawing representa-
tive samples of the population, in designing 
their questions and in their skill and objectiv-
ity in conducting their interviews. W h a t e v e r 
may be lacking in the techniques of the poll 
results reported, the volume contains, as the 
editors state, "more reliable data than is else-
where available" for public opinion research. 
It is truly "an indispensable storehouse of 
information" on opinion. Every social sci-
ence reference collection should include a 
copy.—Robert D. Leigh, Columbia Univer-
sity. 

Unusual Reference Manual 
General Reference Department Staff Manual. 

Prepared by M a r y N . Barton and Ellen F. 
W a t s o n . Baltimore, M d . , Enoch P r a t t 
Free Library, 1950, 230p. $1.75. 

A library's staff manual ordinarily makes 
rather dull reading for an outsider. D e -
sirable as such a tool always is for the 
orientation of the new staff member in a 
particular library, and beneficial as may be 
the results of the necessarily careful re-
examination (and often revision!),, of pro-
cedures and routines that are called for in 
order to get them down in black and white, 
the ordinary manual of another library is 
likely to be riffled through casually and then 
filed and forgotten in the box marked: 

" M a n u a l s of other libraries—to be examined 
for ideas when making our own." 

T h e present staff manual, however, can 
hardly be called an "ordinary" manual, and 
there seem to be reasons for supposing that 
it may not share the fate of those that are. 
Certainly no harm would result if parts of 
this document came to be considered as " r e -
quired reading" for reference assistants in 
any library. It would be nice to think that 
in the preparation of reference manuals for 
other libraries this one w i l l be less "examined 
for ideas," than deliberately "used as a 
model." 

Its unusualness lies not primarily in its 
size, even though (to the best of this review-
er's knowledge) no other library has come 
near to equalling the more than 200 offset-
printed ( 8 i " x 1 1 " ) pages in a manual for 
the Reference Department alone. T h e more 
usual thing is to find the department's pro-
cedures and routines presented on a half-
dozen pages in a manual, much smaller than 
this, covering the w o r k of all departments. 

O f much more importance than mere size 
is the careful thought that quite obviously 
has been given to this w o r k during its dozen 
years of preparation—thought that has re-
sulted in a manual not only admirably ful-
filling its chief purpose of helpfulness within 
a single institution, but also one that has led 
to the inclusion of much material that will 
be of interest to reference workers anywhere. 
Some of the book, it is true, is concerned 
with such characteristically "staff manual" 
kinds of information as the fact that the 
revolving date stamp is kept in the drawer 
below the telephone. Still more of the man-
ual necessarily describes procedures, arrange-
ments, practices and rules which would apply 
is their entirety to no other library. B u t 
along with these things there are sections 
such as " A t t i t u d e toward the reader" (p. 
36-38), and the whole of P a r t V I "Reference 
w o r k : Techniques and Procedures" (p.63-
86), which are not only so applicable to 
reference w o r k in general, but also which are 
so well done that these parts alone might 
easily justify shelving this manual on the 
"Professional Shelf" of almost any reference 
department. Beyond this, it is possible that 
some of the nearly 40 clearly-reproduced 
" f o r m s , " and some of the w e l l thought-out 
and fully described routines may suggest to 

JULY, 1951 295 



reference librarians in other places that their 
own forms and routines are about due for re-
examination and possible improvement. 

T h e Enoch Pratt Free Library provides 
reference service in nine locations—in eight 
subject departments and in the General 
Reference Department. It is with the latter 
only that this manual is concerned, a fact 
that is unlikely to detract much from its in-
terest for other libraries since "general ref-
erence" at Enoch Pratt seems to include the 
major part of the activities called simply 
"reference" in libraries not so completely de-
partmentalized. 

T h e manual starts with two sections of 
introductory material, describing for the 
benefit of new assistants the function of the 
General Reference Department and its rela-
tionships with the rest of the library, identify-
ing its clientele and giving a brief summary 
of the department's history. 

Part I I I , "Organization of the General 
Reference Department," though still directed 
primarily toward the new assistant, is likely 
to be worth the attention of others interested 
in some of the administrative aspects of 
reference departments. One feature is an 
interesting listing of H I "activities" of the 
department, ranging from the department 
head's responsibility for planning and direct-
ing the work of the group, to the page's daily 
chore of sharpening and replacing pencils at 
the public catalog. T h i s may not be a com-
plete listing of the duties of all reference de-
partments, but it is a good beginning! T h i s 
list supplements a large folded chart in which 
the hundred-odd activities are grouped to 
show which are administrative, which pertain 
directly to services and materials in the Gen-
eral Reference Department, which have to 
do with services to and relations with other 
library units, and which are regarded as pro-
fessional contributions in the field of refer-
ence work. T h e other side of this folded 
chart presents an organization diagram 
identifying, by title, the 10 members of the 
department (including a clerk and a page), 
and enumerating the duties and responsibili-
ties of each member. A f t e r having pointed 
out the kinds of work to be done, it is logi-
cal that a discussion should follow of the 
qualities and skills needed by staff members, 
and that some suggestions should be given 
of ways reference assistants can be helped 

to grow and develop on the job. 
T h e next section, on "Physical Layout," 

includes floor plans of the library, the gen-
eral reference room, and of appropriate stack 
areas, with descriptions of the location of 
certain reference tools and collections. 

T h e useful advice, already mentioned, on 
"Attitude toward the reader" comes in Part 
V on "General Policies and Procedures." 
Here also is a description of the statistics 
that are kept, an explanation of the uses to 
which the statistical records are put, and a 
list of six activities considered by the Enoch 
Pratt Library as qualifying, for statistical 
purposes, as "professional aid to readers." 
T h e r e is also a reproduction of the form 
sheet on which daily statistics are recorded. 
T h i s material makes an interesting contribu-
tion to the perennial questions of what refer-
ence statistics to keep, how to keep them and 
what to do with them after they have been 
compiled. 

T h e same section of the manual repro-
duces several other "forms" used by the de-
partment. Among the more novel of these 
are the printed sheets designed to be handed 
to readers who request kinds of help with 
which the library can give only limited serv-
ice—contests and radio quizzes, genealogical 
research and biographical information about 
authors. Each form states the library's 
policy and explains why and in what ways 
service must be restricted. A s a device for 
helping maintain good public relations, such 
printed explanations should go far toward 
assuring the disappointed reader that the re-
fusal of help has official sanction and is not 
simply the whim of an individual desk at-
tendant. 

T h e value of Part V I to reference assist-
ants in general has been suggested already. 
T h i s part of the manual, indeed, would not 
be out of place as a chapter in a textbook on 
reference work. A fe$- pages discussing 
search techniques (the advice given is ex-
cellent) are followed by a list of suggested 
readings (including some designed "to give 
the beginner the 'feel' of reference work and 
a taste for its stimulating possibilities"). T h e 
remainder of this part of the book is given 
over to describing and listing sources, pro-
cedures and techniques involved in handling 
certain common kinds of questions: advice 
about encyclopedias for home purchase, book 

296 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



prices, values of old and rare books (includ-
ing another printed form describing the limits 
of service in this connection), bibliographical 
data about books, quotations, biographical 
reference questions, addresses of persons and 
organizations, and book review questions. 
T h e pattern followed with most of these 
is to give some general advice about handling 
such questions, and then to provide a selected 
bibliography of useful tools for starting the 
search. 

Subsequent parts of the manual concern 
service to readers, w o r k at the information 
desk (staffed by, but physically separate from 
the G e n e r a l Reference D e p a r t m e n t ) , w o r k 
of the clerical assistant and the page, and a 
final section on routines connected with cer-
tain special kinds of materials. Generously 
illustrated with reproductions of form cards 
and form sheets, these later chapters of the 
manual give even an outsider quite a clear 
picture of the department's w o r k . In spite 
of their specific application to the w o r k of 
an individual library, these final sections are 
worth at least perusal by other reference li-
brarians both for ideas on ways of handling 
such common problems as interlibrary loans, 
photographic copying, special indexes, clip-
pings, maps, documents and the like, as w e l l 
as for presenting an example of a way these 
activities can be clearly described. 

Eight double-column pages of index pro-
vide quick access to all topics discussed or 
described in the manual. 

W i t h o u t more familiarity than this re-
viewer has with the library this manual is 
intended to serve, it is impossible for an out-
sider to point to omissions of coverage, though 
in view of the careful planning shown 
throughout the w o r k it seems unlikely that 
there can be serious ones. T h e reviewer's 
attention, in passing, w a s caught by the ab-
sence of reference to P a r k e r W o r l e y ' s lists 
of " C u r r e n t National Bibliographies" which 
began appearing in the A u g u s t 1949 issue of 
the Library of Congress Journal of Current 
Acquisitions. O n page 68 where the H e y l 
list of " C u r r e n t National Bibliographies" is 
cited, some mention of the newer list would 
have seemed appropriate, but this is a minor 
matter indeed. 

Because of its inclusion of material that 
should prove of interest to reference workers 
in many libraries, and as an excellent ex-

ample of w h a t a reference staff manual can 
be, it is a pleasure to call the attention of 
C . R . L . readers to this new publication.— 
Oliver L. Lilley, School of Library Service, 
Columbia University. 

German Publications, 1939-50 
Bibliographien zum Deutschen Schriftturn der 

Jahre 1939-1950, von Hans W i d m a n n . 
Tubingen, M a x Niemeyer, c 1951, 284P. 
33.00 D M . 

Joris Vorstius, in his lucid and comprehen-
sive Ergebnisse und Fortschritte der Biblio-
graphic in Deutschland seit dem ersten Welt-
krieg ( B e i h e f t 74 of Z e i t s : h r i f t f u r Biblio-
tekswesen, 1948) produced an excellent and 
adequate summarization of G e r m a n bibliog-
raphy and documentation, from both a theo-
retical and a practical viewpoint. H e suc-
ceeded in going beyond G e o r g Schneider in 
either way, not only quantitatively but also 
deliberately clearing the ground for detailed 
descriptive publication later. O n l y two years 
after this valiant effort w e are presented by 
H a n s Widmann, one of the able men from 
Tubingen, with just such a record of biblio-
graphical titles. T h o u g h there is no refer-
ence, in the volume under discussion, to 
cooperation between Vorstius and Widmann, 
one can only express the wish that the author 
of this new, painstaking, difficult and in many 
ways thankless, albeit so necessary w o r k may 
have been enabled to benefit by the unpub-
lished manuscript of a Study of Bibliography 
and Librarianship in Germany since 1933, 
already prepared by his colleague in Berlin 
(Vorstius, op. cit. p . l ) . 

A t any rate W i d m a n n builds upon V o r -
stius's Ergebnisse in at least two important 
w a y s : his starting point was determined as 
w e l l as the scope of his compilation, which 
later leads both Vorstius and W i d m a n n 
beyond G e o r g Schneider, who excluded spe-
cial subject bibliography from his Handbuch. 
Both men thus endorse the aims of inclusive-
ness, though on a national or cultural basis, 
applied on a much more comprehensive scale 
by Bestermann and Bohatta-Hodes (see V o r -
stius's article on " P e t z h o l d t Redivivus" in 
ZfB 1950:413-37). 

W i d m a n n has defined his geographic scope 
in much the same w a y as had Vorstius, but 
the latter limited himself to "bibliographies 

JULY, 1951 29 7