College and Research Libraries


T h e profession owes a debt of gratitude 
to Mr. Metcalf, and to the library school of 
Rutgers University, for making this series 
of experiments. They have shed more light 
on a major problem of the library profession. 
And it will be interesting to see what hap-
pens with the group of participants in this 
intensive program. 

One curious aspect of the preparation of 
library administrators ought to be investi-
gated by someone. Several universities, or 
university librarians, have been unusually 
productive as training grounds or teachers 
for future university librarians. Some of 
these universities are not large ones. Why 
do these men or these situations produce an 
unusually large percentage of university li-
brary administrators, and how? This subject 
should be explored in historical perspective. 

Incidentally, the book is undistinguished 
typographically. T h e press could benefit 
from the services of a competent designer 
and typographer. Arthur M. McAnally, Uni-
versity of Oklahoma Library. 

Paper Durability 
The Manufacture and Testing of Durable 

Book Papers. Based on the Investigations 
of W. J . Barrow; edited by Randolph W. 
Church. Richmond: Virginia State Library, 
1960. 63p. Permanent/Durable Book Paper. 
Summary of a Conference held in Wash-
ington, D. C., September 16, 1960. (Vir-
ginia State Library Publications, Nos. 13, 
16). Richmond: Virginia State Library, 
1960. 53p. 

T h e book trade has been, in effect, vic-
timized by its own success in spreading the 
desire for learning. For four hundred years 
after the first printers learned how to multi-
ply the supply of books the demand for 
paper remained in uneasy equilibrium with 
the supply. Difficulties were never completely 
surmounted, and there are constant reports 
of paper shortages produced by economic 
warfare, priatical cutting of trade routes, 
governmentally sponsored attempts to seduce 
the paper-makers from traditional loyalties, 
or officially approved armed intervention. 
Linen rags were in such short supply that 
sumptuary laws forbade the use of linen 
burial clothes, and even the linen wrappings 

of Egyptian mummies were requisitioned by 
certain ingenious paper-makers. Major works 
of scholarship were delayed or abandoned for 
lack of paper, or published only after gov-
ernmental privilege permitted duty-free pa-
per. But however scarce or expensive the 
paper was, its permanence was not in ques-
tion: quality varied widely, and yet not only 
the best but essentially all good paper, made 
from linen and gelatine-sized, seems likely 
to be able to outlast our civilization. 

One hundred years ago the revolution 
came with unexpected speed. T h e power 
press and the public's rapidly increasing 
literacy combined to make ever-larger edi-
tions both feasible and necessary, and linen 
rags could never have supplied the paper now 
demanded by daily newspapers, comic books, 
paper backs, and popular magazines. Had 
technological change come in a different 
sequence, the principal raw material might 
have become cotton; but the development of 
the sulphite process and rosin-alum sizing 
turned the field over to wood-pulp, leaving 
to rags only the non-expanding field of ex-
pensive hand-made paper. 

When book papers are made by the acid 
sulphite process, preservation becomes im-
possible. T h e book trade was driven by the 
inexorable presures of demand and costs to 
turn almost entirely to wood-pulp papers, 
and it ought in fairness to be reiterated that 
the publishers were not the initiators but 
the victims of these pressures. Librarians 
have been forced to stand idly by as their 
collections ceased to be printed on ageless 
linen paper and even books planned for 
permanent record were almost universally 
printed on the only available paper, made of 
alum-sized chemical wood-pulp. (Only one 
incidental reference is made in these two re-
ports to the added hazard of library climates 
in American cities.) 

Because of the enthusiasm of Mr. Barrow, 
the support of Mr. Church, and the vision of 
the Ford Foundation through its Council on 
Library Resources, the Virginia State Library 
has spent three years in a systematic attempt 
to learn what can be done within the limits 
prescribed by technology and economics. T h e 
first step, to certify that books printed on 
wood-pulp paper deteriorate, was perhaps 
necessary to convince doubting industrialists 
and perhaps artistically attractive to establish 
the validity of carefully controlled experi-

310 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S 



mentation; but to the historical eye no proof 
was needed of this fact. Hence die most im-
portant part of the first report was the evi-
dence that soaking in a bicarbonate solution 
may retard deterioration by increasing the 
alkalinity, if such an over-simplified phrase 
can be employed for describing the special-
ized chemical formulations. (See the review 
of the first report by H . H. Fussier in C R L , 
X X I (1960), 417-19 p.) 

T h e hope of most librarians, however, is 
that books should hereafter be printed on a 
non-deteriorating paper, since we now know 
the problem. T o this hope Mr. Barrow and 
his staff have addressed themselves for two 
years. Unless a completely new substance like 
soybeans or a petroleum-based plastic should 
become technologically feasible as the raw 
material for paper, the work must be based 
on wood-pulp. T h e result must be suitably 
opaque, adaptable to different thicknesses 
and finishes, able to take printer's ink (un-
less new developments make letter-press 
printing itself obsolete), and commercially 
competitive with the many existing grades 
of acid sulphite paper; the wood-pulp itself 
and the sizing must blend to produce the 
desired result. Many if not all research-
minded paper-makers have been concerned 
with the problem. With the co-operation of 
the manufacturers, Mr. Barrow has been able 
to specify commercially feasible alkaline-sized 
papers, using blends of wood-pulp prepared 
by the sulphite, sulphate, and soda processes, 
papers that can be priced competitively, 
hard-finished papers that ink adequately (or 
better than adequately) in letter-press and 
offset printing. T h e reports are printed on 
three of these papers, similar but not identi-
cal in specifications; to one of them the man-
ufacturer has assigned the trade-name "Per-
malife." Save for a slightly mottled effect, not 
a serious blemish and probably susceptible 
to improvement, these papers are qualita-
tively equal to, or better than, most good 
papers now in use, in addition to their 
strength and resistance to deterioration. 

T h e problem is not yet entirely mastered. 
Continued efforts by librarians and others 
will be needed to encourage manufacturers 
to continue experimenting, to produce per-
manent and attractive papers within several 
price ranges suitable for various uses. Mr. 
Barrow's studies have pointed to one but not 
the only such product; the book trade and 

paper-technologists can work consistently 
towards the development of such papers. 
ALA was instructed by the conference last 
September to take the lead in guiding public 
opinion to encourage continued effort.— 
A. T. Hazen, School of Library Service, 
Columbia University. 

A Second Edition 
Library Administration. By S. R. Rangana-

than. (Ranganathan Series in Library Sci-
ence, 3). New York: Asia Publishing House 
[1960, c. 1959]. 674p. 

This volume traces its origin to the Lon-
don School of Librarianship and to the lec-
tures on "Library Routine" given there in 
1924 by C. R. Sanderson. Mr. Ranganadian's 
experience was followed by observation of 
daily operations in more than a hundred 
libraries in the United Kingdom, by years 
of responsibility in the administration of the 
Madras University Library, and by diirty 
years of teaching library science. T h e first 
edition appeared in 1935 and "each chapter 
was tested by actual application in the day-
to-day work." 

" T h e book contained a forest of details 
. . . enjoyed an unusually good reception" 
and went out-of-print in two years. Its re-
publication has been deferred from time to 
time to permit the appearance of several 
volumes on the classification of books, a field 
in which the author has made a distinct con-
tribution. However, substantial library sub-
sidies from the government in India have 
recently emphasized the man-power shortage 
in librarianship and have lent urgency to 
the rewriting and republication of this book 
on library administration as a daily desk 
guide to management. 

Chief among the changes incorporated in 
this second edition are (1) the staff formula 
to determine the strength of staff; (2) the 
prescription of routine on book orders; (3) 
simplification of the three-card system in the 
administration of periodicals; (4) changing 
the book card to a pocketed form and the 
reader's ticket into a non-pocketed plain 
card; and (5) the introduction of the con-
science box. 

As the author says "this is not a book to 
be read through . . . It is, on the contrary, a 

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