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 . 

~ 
I 

... 
I 
I 

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 



can be no question of the need for such a 
volume, and the cooperative approach pro-
vided by the ALA Statistics Coordinating 
Project should encourage general acceptance 
and use. Hopefully, as noted by Frank 
Schick in the foreword, "it may well prove 
the basis for an international standard for 
library statistics .... " 

The volume is organized with an opening 
chapter on General Concepts, followed by 
chapters on Statistics of College and Univer-
sity Libraries, Statistics of State Library 
Agencies, Statistics of School Libraries, Sta-

~ tistics of Special Libraries, and Statistics of 
Library Education. Each is written by a 
specialist in the field. 

The chapter on Statistics of College and 
University Libraries was prepared by Mari-
etta Chicorel, whose interest in this field 
is further represented by an article in CRL 
for January, 1966 (Marietta Chicorel, "Sta-
tistics and Standards for College and Uni-
versity Libraries," C RL, XXVII [January 
1966], 19-22). It is suggested that a reading 
of this article will provide a background for 
understanding some of the recommendations 
made. While there may be some disagree-
ment over decisions reached, for instance in 
the matter of using the physical volume 
rather than the bibliographical unit as the 
basis for count, we are at least provided 
with a clear statement on this and other 
items normally asked for in statistical re-
ports. There also seems to be reasonable 
consistency in the definitions and principles 
among the chapters on Public Libraries, 
College and University Libraries, and Spe-
cial Libraries. 

A glossary of terms is provided and is 
generally based on the ALA Glossary of 
Library Terms. 

In order that the volume be representa-
tive of a broad spectrum, arrangements were 
made for a series of four regional confer-
ences involving more than one hundred and 
sixty librarians. My only quarrel with the 
accuracy of the volume came for obvious 
reasons on page 148 where I found Mildred 
C. Langner, medical librarian of the Uni-
versity of Miami, identified in a similar ca-
pacity with the University of Mississippi! 

Joel Williams, director of the Statistics 
Coordinating Project, his staff and the Ad-
visory Committee are to be congratulated 

Book Reviews I 285 

upon the successful preparation of a very 
useful volume.-Archie McNeal, University 
of Miami. 

Computer Filing of Index, Bibliographic, 
and Catalog Entries. By Theodore C. 
Hines and Jessica L. Harris. Newark: 
Bro-Dart Foundation, 1966. ix + 126 pp. 
( 66-23484) . 

The purpose of this book is to develop 
a code for computer or hand filing of li-
brary, catalog, bibliographic, or index en-
tries in a divided arrangement wherein 
authors, titles, and subjects are to be in 
separate alphabets. The authors assume 
"that filing should be a purely mechanical 
routine of handling entries whose written 
form actually determines their relative posi-
tions." In other words, the cataloger or in-
dexer prepares the entry for filing, and the 
computer does a simple, mechanical sort-
ing into alphabetical order. 

However, the computer has far greater 
capabilities for filing than the mere ability 
to sort alphabetically catalog or index en-
tries manually prepared for such a sorting. 
Use of a computer as a mere sorting ma-
chine wastes much of its power, for the 
computer can relieve the cataloger or in-
dexer of most of the work involved in set-
ting up the entry for filing. For instance, the 
authors recommend that catalogers and in-
dexers omit initial articles in the nominative 
case from title entries, but it is perfectly 
feasible to have the computer ignore these 
articles in mechanically preparing entries 
for filing; the article appears in the printed 
product, but was ignored in the alphabeting 
procedure. 

It is customary in sorting records with a 
computer to have the computer edit the 
category in the record under which the 
record is to be filed. The computer is in-
sh·ucted to edit appropriate characters and 
set them up in a special sort field. The sort 
program then operates on this field. 

In setting up sort-field characters, the 
computer can alter original data in any 
way desired, providing that each character 
is always changed with the same algorithm. 
The algorithm may be quite complex and 
relate a given character with other elements 
so that in one circumstance it may be edited 
in one way and in another circumstance in