College and Research Libraries


Scarecrow Press's operations has consider-
able validity, but its flaws are all too clear 
when a good piece of work is prevented 
from reaching the high standard that its 
basic substance justifies. It is a considerable 
praise for Grotzinger' s work that it remains, 
despite these drawbacks, a sound, readable, 
and definitive study of an important figure 
of American librarianship.-W. L. William-
son, University of Wisconsin. 

Libraries and the College Climate of 
Learning. Ed. by Dan Bergen and E. D. 
Duryea. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. 
Pr., 1964. ix, 84p. $1.25. (66-18300). 

This series of p~pers from a conference 
at Syracuse University in June 1965 will be 
especially welcomed by those who heard 
enthusiastic accounts from the people who 
attended. The conference, sponsored by the 
school of library science and the Program 
for Higher Education in the school of edu-
cation, offered some eighty librarians, pro-
fessors, and administrators an opportunity 
to consider the drift .. away from a primary 
concern with student learning," and .. to 
introduce new insights illuminating the re-
lationship of the undergraduate student, 
the institutional or campus climate, and the 
library." The two purposes are admirably 
fulfilled by the professors and librarians 
who prepared the papers. 

The first, by a psychologist, with the in-
triguing title, .. The Book on Bar dot's Bot-
tom ," is an analysis of today' s undergradu-
ates which concludes reassuringly that they 
.. have come to school to learn, and to find 
relevance to life in that learning." And if 
there sometimes seems to be a lot of sex 
among the .. books and banners," the his-
tory of collegiate education proves it was 
ever thus. 

Next, a sociologist considers the problem 
of providing the student with resources out-
side the classroom where .. a good share, if 
not most" of his learning takes place. Con-
sidering the advantages of homogeneity in 
the small college versus those of diversity 
in the university, he concludes that, for li-
brary purposes, .. We shall have to have it 
both ways." He suggests the student union 
as a good place to locate a .. sublibrary" and 
that "no campus library is a good library if 
it does not have a good coffee shop." He 

Book Reviews I 141 

admits, however, that, .. The coffee would 
need to be priced a little high, perhaps, to 
replace,books smudged to death by greasy 
fingers. 

Mrs. Patricia Knapp then speaks wisely 
out of her experience at Monteith College. 
She states her conviction that "the major 
potential of the library toward the develop-
ment of an integrated learning environment 
lies in its relationship to the curriculum 
and the faculty," suggesting that the in-
volvement of the librarian in such a rela-
tionship is more important than the physical 
location of the book collection. 

Robert T. Jordan of the Council on Li-
brary Resources dreams big in the next 
paper about the .. library-college" and the 
elements of a liberating education. He offers 
specific patterns for the design of a library 
.. that has incorporated within its structure 
both formal and informal educational ac-
tivities." 

In the next paper, an educational soci-
ologist describes the evolution of American 
higher education and predicts its implica-
tions for future librarians. Library elder 
statesmen will be fascinated by this profes-
sor's-eye view of what they have experi-
enced, and young librarians should read 
it as a guide to how to adapt to the chang-
ing requirements for successful librarian-
ship. 

Dan Bergen, then of the Syracuse school 
of library science, provides a thoughtful 
conclusion, as joint editor with E. D. Dur-
yea, the chairman of Syracuse's Program in 
Higher Education, who wrote the foreword . 
-Katharine M. Stokes, Western Michigan 
University. 

Book Publishing in America. By Charles 
A. Madison. New York: McGraw-Hill, 
1966. 628p. $12.50. (66-18477). 

The title of Charles A. Madison's most 
recent volume is over-inclusive, because the 
book does not really attempt to describe the 
multifaceted personality of Book Publishing 
in America. Perhaps a more exact title 
would be Chronicles of Book Publishing in 
the United States; its breadth is limited to 
one country and its scope to one dimension 
of publishing history-viz., to the great 
firms, the great names, and the great books 
of a great industry-without attempt to in-
terpret or exegete upon them.