College and Research Libraries


BOOK REVIEWS 
Bohdan S. Wynar. Research Methods in 

Library Science: A Bibliographic Guide 
with Topical Outlines. Littleton, Colo.: 
Libraries Unlimited, Inc., 1971. 153p. 

American librarians, harried by heavy 
work loads and influenced by their edu-
cational backgrounds (humanities), have 
consistently chosen to rely on intuition 
and tradition as the best avenues to sound 
library management. The last several dec-
ades, however, have ushered in a library 
scene at once so mammoth and complex 
that most contemporary adminisb·ators are 
beginning to doubt the efficacy of intui-
tion, habit, and tradition as guides to li-
brary management. Most librarians now 
appear to view "research" as an essential 
ingredient in the library administration for-
mula. 

This growing interest in "research" -and 
few agree on the definition of that term-
is illustrated by the establishment and con-
comitant popularity of the Library Re-
search Round Table of ALA. Further evi-
dence of this new interest can be found 
in the appearance of a number of works 
designed to facilitate research in library 
science. 

Most of these works, such as the Bundy 
and Wasserman Reader in Research M eth-
ods and Goldhor's Introduction to Scien-
tific Research in Librarianship fell consid-
erably short of their promise. Others like 
Bob Lee's Research in Librarianship: 
Course Outline and Bibliography proved 
to be useful and inexpensive guides to the 
literature. But, we still stand in need of 
an adequate guide to research methods in 
library science. 

Bohdan Wynar's Research Methods in 
Library Science will not answer that need. 
Indeed, Wynar' s book is poorly conceived 
and haphazardly executed. The book is in 
reality the compiler's course outline and 
bibliography for a research course taught 
over the years in various library schools. 
The topical outlines are so brief as to be 
useless, and the 700-odd items cited are 

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Recent Publications 

neither the best works nor the most repre-
sentative in their respective categories, i.e., 
history, experimental studies, surveys, con-
tent analysis, etc. For instance, in the his-
tory section, the compiler cites several pa-
pers by Laurel Grotzinger while neglecting 
to note her excellent book length study on 
Katherine Anne Sharp, and he omits any 
reference at all to the important work of 
Haynes McMullen on nineteenth-century 
American librmies. These oversights could 
be duplicated in each section of the book. 
Wynar also appends brief annotations to 
about half of the works cited-annotations 
which are descriptive in nature and in 
many cases hardly justify the effort-i.e., 
"This is a good historical survey," or "a 
well documented work." 

Who could make use of such a book? 
Certainly not the professional librarian 
whose need is for a guide to methods 
rather than the literature. Mter having 
taught research methods for a number of 
years I also doubt whether this book would 
be of any real value to the master's can-
didate in library science. The errors of 
omission and commission are numerous 
enough to make the bibliographies mis-
leading. But, library school faculty will 
probably find an occasional item unknown 
to rthem, and perhaps the Ph.D. candidate 
studying for his qualifying exams might 
benefit from a survey of its contents. 

One wonders how a book so poorly 
planned and executed and with such a 
limited audience could justify publication 
in hard cover at a price of $8.50. Perhaps 
the fact that the compiler is president of 
Libraries Unlimited, Inc., is explanation 
enough.-Michael H. Harris, College of Li-
?rary Science, University of Kentucky, Lex-
mgton. 

Research Librarianship, Essays in Honor 
of Robert B. Downs. Ed. by Jerrold Orne. 
New York and London: R. R. Bowker 
Company, 1971. xvii, 162p. $11.95. 

Ten librarians contributed to this vol-
ume, edited by Jerrold Orne, as a token of 
professional respect for Robert B. Downs 

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