College and Research Libraries


Bibliographical Control and Service. By 
Roy Stokes. New York: London House 
and Maxwell, 1965. 125p. $4.95. ( 65-
26280). 

The purpose of this little textbook is a 
modest one, viz., to assist the student who is 
preparing himself for "Paper Four of Part 
One" of the recently revised examination 
syllabus of The (British) Library Associa-
tion. The result, appropriately enough, is 
a modest publication in the writing of 
which one feels that the author, well known 
for his editorship of the much more dis-
tinguished A Student's Manual of Bibliog-
raphy, was somewhat ill at ease in being 
obliged to follow strictly "the order of the 
items in the syllabus of this examination." 

More than one American librarian must 
have been surprised in the past year or 
two by what would appear to be a minor 
explosion in England in the production of 
textbooks of librarianship. Time was when 
The Library Association, The Association 
of Assistant Librarians, and Grafton, with 
an occasional and usually more notable con-
tribution from Allen and Unwin, just about 
covered everything. Today a small band-
wagon seems to be rolling and on it we find 
Deutsch _ (the London publisher of Bibli-
ographical Control and Service), Clive 
Bingley, Crosby Lockwood, Butterworths, 
and others. The situation is such that it 
might well call for a modicum of "bibli-
ographical control" all on its own. Certainly 
it is a matter for regret that much of this 
greatly increased output is undistinguished, 
betraying obvious signs of hasty prepara-
tion and carrying with it the unmistakable 
odor of a British library school classroom 
(the author of the work under review is 
head of the Loughborough school of li-
brarianship) . Maybe the new examination 
syllabus is largely to blame for this sad 
state of affairs. From the evidence re-
vealed in Mr. Stokes's textbook "Paper 
Four of Part One" must be something of 
a hotchpotch. In the first chapter, for ex-
ample, we are brought up against the 
formidable forebodings of Vannevar Bush; 
in chapter 5 we are given such bits of 
information as: "One of these is the recto 

Book Reviews 
page, which is the right-hand one when 
looking at the complete opening of a book 
while the verso page, or the verso of a leaf, 
is the one on the reverse"! Somehow one 
feels that the author was more on his home 
ground in this very useful chapter on "Con-
temporary Production Methods." The diffi-
culty is seeing what it has to do with all 
that has gone before. 

The major part of the book and, pre-
sumably, of "Paper Four of Part One" is 
concerned with a listing of the major gen-
eral bibliographies, selection aids, and ref-
erence works, with which the student is 
expected to familiarize himself. Whenever 
possible, references to the Winchell or 
Walford numbers or both are given. This is 
a useful device and certainly saves what 
would otherwise be wasteful repetition. At 
the same time it scarcely enhances the ap-
pearance of the page. 

The listings, like the whole publication, 
are comparatively modest and, in general, 
somewhat insular. This is perhaps inevitable 
in view of the purpose of the book. Certain-
ly the librarian of any sizeable academic 
library in the United States would find the 
lists of little value as aids to collection 
building. Indeed there are times when in-
sularity goes too far. Whatever they may 
do at Harvard, the Library of Congress 
spells catalog without the ue! 

The book was produced in Great Britain 
-again modestly and at an original price 
of 18s, which is almost half the American 
publication price at the current rate of 
exchange.-]. Clement Harrison, Graduate 
School of Library and Information Sciences, 
University of Pittsburgh. 

The Public Library and the City. Ed. by 
Ralph W. Conant. Cambridge, Mass.: 
The MIT Press, 1965. xii, 216p. $6.75 
( 65-27504). 
In 1963, the Joint Center for Urban 

Studies (MIT and Harvard) and the 
National Book Committee sponsored a 
Symposium on Library Functions in the 
Changing Metropolis. The Public Library 
and the City is an edited collection of some 
of the papers presented at the symposium-
not all of the papers delivered there have 

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