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 

/407 



4081 College & Research Libraries • September, 1966 

been included-plus three essays espe-
cially prepared for this publication. The 
contributors are political and social scien-
tists, economists, educators, communica-
tions experts, and librarians. 

The volume is organized to show a con-
cern £rst with some of the people who use 
public libraries as well as those who do 
not use them; then with libraries them-
selves; and £nally with trends in urban 
politics, government, and £seal policies 
affecting libraries. 

Much of what is discussed here has a 
familiar ring: the effect on the library of 
the growing student population, the in-
creasing number of older people, the move-
ment (except for ethnic minorities) to the 
suburbs, the ineffectiveness of the library 
in reaching the lower half of the working 
class, and difficulties arising from the li-
brary's effort to be all things to all people, 
to name a few. 

The most provocative contributions are 
those of the social scientists. Howard S. 
Becker, for example, contributes brilliantly 
to our understanding of the difference be-
tween college and noncollege youth but 
doubts that the public library is equipped 
to deal with the problems of the latter. 
Charles M. Tiebout and Robert J. Willis 
examine the question of public support for 
libraries and conclude that, although fed-
eral, state, and local governments have a 
responsibility, the individual library user 
has not paid his full share. Edward C. Ban-
Held, in the same vein, takes a very hard 
look indeed at the raison d' etre of the pub-
lic library and £nds that it has ceased to 
serve its original purpose and has not ac-
quired a new purpose that it can justify. 
Ban£eld believes the public library should 
be concerned with the serious reader only 
and suggests that it offer services which, 
taken together, more closely resemble spe-
ciallibrarianship than what is normally con-
ceived of as public librarianship or even 
present-day research librarianship: provision 
of cubicles, maintenance of up-to-date, an-
notated bibliographies, "personal" librarians 
who would take telephone "orders," arrange 
home deliveries and pickups, and offer 
assistance in £nding books for readers to 
buy, as well as tutorial service in specialized 
subject areas. And Richard Meier thinks 
that the routine and high-volume demands 

for information will in the future be pro-
vided by regional data banks and docu-
mentation centers, leaving it to the library 
to serve the needs of adult education and 
scholarship by making available materials 
that cannot be stored and retrieved con-
veniently by mechanical means. 

The whole spectrum of the urban library 
problem is considered here. The need for 
further exploration is indicated by the in-
clusion of a chapter called "Some Research 
Questions." Nevertheless these essays, to-
gether with the annotated bibliography 
which accompanies them, will serve as a 
useful guide and point of departure for 
librarians and others concerned with public 
library service in metropolitan areas.-]ames 
W. Henderson, The New York Public Li-
brary. 

The Superior Student in American High-
er Education. Ed. by Joseph W. Cohen. 
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 
1966. xvi, 299p. $7.95 (65-27675). 

"The Honors System . . . at its worst . . . 
is an educational experiment wqrthy of ob-
jective, scientific attention." This, rather 
than merely "the superior student" is the 
focus of this volume which, briefly, traces 
the history of the honors movement in 
America; spells out some of the charac-
teristics and needs of the superior student 
(and inadvertently exposes the precious-
ness of some of them) that lead to the de-
velopment of honors programs; gives case 
studies of honors work in such differing 
academic milieus as liberal arts colleges, 
private and state universities, and secondary 
schools; and treats of the differing objectives 
and methods of departmental and college 
honors. Few have been so long and so close-
ly connected with the honors movement or 
done so much to forward it as the editor 
and principal contributor. His collaborators 
are equally well qualified. 

The honors movement in the United 
States began early in this century but did 
not gain real impetus until Aydelotte es-
tablished his well known program at 
Swarthmore, and John Dewey laid empha-
sis on experimentation in education-both 
in the 1920's. A slow but steady growth 
eventually led to the founding of the Inter-
University Committee on the Superior Stu-
dent. The trebling of the number of honors