College and Research Libraries


A Bibliography of Illinois Imprints, 1814-
1858. By Cecil K. Byrd, Chicago: The 
University of Chicago Press, 1966. xxv, 
601 p. $12.50 (65-24423). 

This is a successful and important addi-
tion to the growing list of bibliographies of 
early state imprints which are essential to 
an understanding of the role played by the 
printing press. Mr. Byrd has chosen to fol-
low the plan laid out by Douglas C. Mc-
Murtrie for recording post-1800 imprints by 
state rather than the wholesale approach 
used by Charles Evans for the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries. McMurtrie began 
by identifying the early press and imprints 
of each locality; out of this grew that great 
mass of raw material found in the mimeo-
graphed American Imprint Inventory lists. 
From these and other studies have been 
prepared a number of bibliographies of the 
imprints of individual states, the most re-
cent of which was McCorison's Vermont 
Imprints. Thus far bibliographers have 
avoided the great printing centers of Boston, 
New York, and Philadelphia. 

Using the conventional chronological 
arrangement, the author has endeavored to 
include all products of "native" Illinois 
presses, excepting certain state documents 
printed principally for the use of legislators, 
blank forms, and similar ephemera. The de-
scriptions are a sensible compromise be-
tween short-title listings and detailed de-
scriptions. Enough information is given to 
identify the item and determine the com-
pleteness of a copy in hand. However, Mr. 
Byrd's modest statement, "editorial com-
ments occur when it was thought that the 
title, its subject matter, its author was 
important enough to merit historical or bi-
ographical elaboration," fails to warn the 
user to a significant contribution to this kind 
of bibliography. There are in fact only a few 
entries which do not receive the benefit of 
Byrd's editorial comments. Some run to as 
much as a half a page. The information he 
provides makes it possible to place each 
item in its time and place in the history of 
Illinois. The book becomes immensely more 

284/ I 

Book Reviews 

useful for both the casual user checking 
one imprint and for the historian who is 
surveying this period of the state's history. 
This is facilitated by the full index which 
contains not only names of people but also 
those of organizations. This is particularly 
important because so many of the items 
have corporate entries . 

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... 
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Mr. Byrd has followed the principle of 
recording only those imprints which he felt ' 
"reasonably certain still exist," and has .- LJ, 
omitted titles to which he found references 

I 

but for which no copies could be located. 
He is quite frank about the collections 
which he was unable to inspect. Thus when 
one of those collections is given as a loca-
tion, the user is alerted to the fact that the 
item was not actually seen. It is clear that 
Mr. Byrd's failure to see these items was 
not from want of effort on his part. The 
one, minor, bothersome point is the treat-
ment of the location of copies. Although in 
many cases two or three locations are given, 
a large number of entries have only one. 
Are these items really as scarce as this 
would suggest at first glance? 

In the Introduction is a useful breakdown 
of the number of items issued each year in 
each town. The largest number were either 
government publications or religious texts. 
One is tempted to make a comparison with 
the output of the first thirty-five years of 
the Massachusetts, New York, or Pennsyl-
vania presses. 

Although the "not in Byrd" game can 
now begin, the basis for the history of 
printing in this vital state is now firmly 
anchored.-Thomas R. Adams, John Carter 
Brown library, Brown University. 

Library Statistics: A Handbook of Con-
cepts, Definitions, and Terminology. Ed. 
by Joel Williams. Chicago, Illinois: ALA, 
1966. 166p. $5.50 ( 66-22724). 

"The principal objective of this handbook 
is the standardization of concepts, defini-
tions, and terminology for the several basic 
types of libraries." How well this has been 
achieved can only be determined by the 
application and use of the content. There