College and Research Libraries


Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, scores 121 en-
tries; Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 138; and Bishop 
Edward Stillingfleet, 123. Yet the palm for 
the greatest number of entries goes to that 
unappeasable pamphleteer, William Prynne, 
with 344. William Penn, no unprolific writer 
himself, comes up with 153. 

Being an age of civil war and its aftermath, 
thousands of pamphlets appeared anony-
mously. The anonymous pamphleteer, how-
ever, displayed a singular lack of originality 
in his titles. There are 107 entries beginning 
with "Short," "A Short Way," "A Short Re-
lation," "A Short Cut"; there were 53 "Sea-
sonables," 131 "Reasons," 111 "Stranges," 
and no less than 806 beginning with the word 
"True." These were the key words. 

Seldom does any book deserve the too much 
abused description of "indispensable." Wing 
does deserve it. All scholars of 17th century 
England, and all the librarians who serve 
them, have already recognized what it means 
to have easily and accurately available a list 
of all books and pamphlets printed in the 
period, and their dependence on Wing will 
grow in the years to come. If the Index 
Society never sponsors another "index," it will 
have justified its formation by the publication 
of Wing.—Stanley Pargellis, The Newberry 
Library. 

Studies in Bibliography 
Studies in Bibliography. Papers of the Biblio-

graphical Society of the University of Vir-
ginia. Edited by Fredson Bowers. Vol. 4, 
i95I/52, Charlottesville. ($6.00, free to 
members.) 
A wondrous sight, familiar to many librar-

ians, is that of mortification being publicly 
performed en masse by the initiates of a bibli-
ographical society. I refer to the custom of 
their meetings at which on fidget-hard chairs 
or soporific seats the membership is expected 
to assimilate audially papers which are visual 
in their appeal. The Bibliographical Society 
(London) and its American counterpart are 
confirmed practitioners of this traditional rite, 
and I am rather certain that if one were to 
suggest to their officers that meetings should 
be devoted entirely to visual representation of 
bibliographical topics—exhibits, slides, etc.— 
the heretic would be quickly water-marked 
and sent down river. 

Five years ago a hopeful augury was the 
founding of a new bibliographical society at 
the University of Virginia, and although one 
of its founding high priests, Professor Fredson 
Bowers, personifies the apotheosis of Scientific 
Bibliography, humanistic amelioration was 
furnished by his co-founding fellow Virgin-
ians, John Cook Wyllie, Jack Dalton and 
Linton Massey. 

The papers gathered into print in Volume 
4 are a nice blend of historical and statistical 
bibliography and of British, Continental and 
American topics. Shakespeare is the subject 
of four contributions; the moderns include 
Sherwood Anderson and T . S. Eliot. Useful 
feature is a "Selective Checklist of Biblio-
graphical Scholarship" compiled by Hirsch 
and Heaney. Issuance of a bound annual 
volume has advantages over quarterly papers, 
such as those published by the Bibliographical 
Society of America, which are awkward to 
use in parts and increasingly costly to bind. 

Publication of these studies is but one of 
the activities of this lively Virginia group. 
They also sponsor a student book collectors' 
contest, and a contest for the best printing in 
Virginia. The Society richly deserves the 
world-wide interest it has elicited.—Lawrence 
Clark Powell, University of California Li-
brary, Los Angeles. 

Library Trends 
Library Trends, Volume I, Number 1, July 

1952. University of Illinois Library School, 
Urbana, Illinois. Quarterly. $5.00 per 
year. 
Library Trends is the new quarterly of the 

University of Illinois Library School. It is 
the outcome of a four-year study of the avail-
able library literature by the school's faculty 
and marks its decision that there was a place 
for a new professional journal—a journal 
which would "present in each issue a synthesis 
and evaluation of a single topic relating to 
librarianship . . . review and evaluate current 
practice and current thinking in librarianship 
. . . [and] be even more concerned with the 
probable future of such current developments 
in librarianship." 

"Current Trends in College and University 
Libraries" is the subject of the first number 
(July, 1952). In a brief introduction, the 
editor of this issue, Robert B. Downs, sum-

JANUARY, 1953 99