College and Research Libraries raw data of history; and, if at times their reminiscences provide clues rather than an- swers, the quality of their responses to perhaps not always inspired leads is an overall strength rather than a weakness in this type of "history." Until very recently the number of sub- stantial Canadian library histories could be counted on the fingers of one hand ex- cluding the thumb, and the valid syn- thesis could be counted on the thumb. In- deed, even that synthesis, Antonio Drolet's Les Bibliotheques Canadiennes, 1604-1960 (Montreal: Cercle du Livre de France, 1965) has been published only in French and is, perhaps for that reason, little known outside of Quebec. Moreover, Drolet's pio- neer venture, courageous though it was, suffered severely from the lack of specific histories upon which to draw; and in this respect served merely to underscore the sad state of Canadian historiography. As We Remember It forms, therefore, an im- portant addition to the source materials of library history, and one may now hope that Dr. Rothstein, recently freed from oveiTiding administrative demands, will find the time and the incentive to produce a scholarly interpretation which would add perspective to the data, preserved with such foresight in these engaging memoirs. "Try to remember, and if you remember, follow, follow, follow ... . "-]. P. Wilkin- son, Professor, School of Library Science, University of Toronto Andriot, John L., ed. Guide to U.S. Gov- ernment Serials & Periodicals. McLean, Virginia, Documents Index, 1971. 4 vol- umes in 3. Paper. $60.00. LC No. 75- 7027. "As a general rule, the public docu- ments have been a despised class of books." The statement is Melvil Dewey's, spoken in 1877. Later he added, "A few United States documents are regarded as valuable. Specialists have learned that they contain much which is of the utmost importance to them, and which they can obtain no- where else." Today not only specialists but anybody dealing in the commodity called information, values the content of govern- ment publications. As far as their unstan- dardized, whimsical, erratic, multifarious and unpredictable form is concerned they Recent Publications I 333 are, if not despised, at least tacitly frowned upon by most users and librarians alike. Only one aspect of Dewey's statement lost its validity. Today few government pub- lications would be identified as books. Compounding the problems of their han- dling, a frightfully high percentage of them is issued in serial form. Andriot' s Guide is a courageous and quite successful effort to lighten two kinds of headache of the library world: govern- ment documents and serials. It must be made clear at the outset that the Guide is a directory and not an index. It provides bibliographic control of federally published serials and periodicals by several listings: (a) An alphabetic list of U.S. government agencies, commissions, and committees, with a brief history of each, (b) a classified list of Superintendent of Documents numbers with the names of agencies they represent, (c) classified list of current agencies (in existence on January 1, 1971) with an- notated entries of their serial publications, (d) classified list of abolished agencies with their annotated publications and dis- continued SuDocs numbers, (e) agency and title indexes. The Guide is in its sev- enth edition. Since its first publication in 1962, numerous, substantial changes attest to the responsiveness of its editor to spe- cific information problems connected with government serials. What are some of these problems, and to what extent are they helped by the Guide? 1) Federal government agencies, with their frequent reorganizational changes present a tangled pattern. The maze is carried over into the classification scheme of federal publications, which mirrors the agencies' organizational structure. The Guide lists and briefly describes 2,216 agencies in the authority file of volume 1. Especially useful are lists of House and Senate committees and special presidential commissions. Unfortunately, the lack of a subject approach limits the value of this section. (The Government Organization Manual provides comparable directory in- formation in conjunction with a subject in- dex.) [For instance, somebody interested in agencies with an environmental con- cern will find only three listings. The "Agency index" in volume 4 will lead him to an additional seven, which still do not 334 I College & Research Libraries • July 1972 provide the full picture of federal environ- mental involvement.] 2) Most of the standard periodical selec- tion tools offer either very inadequate bib- liographic control of government period- icals or none. (Ulrich's includes more gov- ernment periodicals in recent editions, but it is still highly selective and unannotated.) Also the lists designed specifically for the selection of government periodicals (the February issue of the Monthly Catalog or Price List No. 36) are more limited in scope and bibliographic detail than Andri- ot's Guide. Research libraries in need of a comprehensive bibliographic apparatus will want to investigate the new Checklist of United States Public Documents, 1789- 1970 (Index four lists series) and com- pare it with Andriot' s Guide. 3) A well-known problem is the identi- fication of non-GPO serials including elu- sive bulletins, circulars, newsletters, re- leases, and looseleaf services put out by minor bureaus and field agencies. The Guide includes most of these fugitive items not readily identified by any other tool. 4) Sub-series of government serials have always appalled and frustrated users. Ci- tations of such sub-series are furnished and annotated. Examples of series thus analyzed include the Catalog of Copyright Entries, Current Fishery Statistics, Water Supply Papers and, what will please any information seeker who ever tackled the Serial Set, even House and Senate docu- ments. 5) After a government periodical had been bibliographically identified, informa- tion about its availability, frequency, and price is as vital as the basic question about its existence. The Guide provides the fol- lowing details fCi>r each entry: Availability (same symbols used as in the Monthly Catalog), beginning date, frequency, LC card number, SuDocs number, and deposi- tory item number. It is regrettable that in- formation provided by earlier editions is no longer included: LC class number, decimal class number, and price. 6) With the federal government becom- ing more and more involved in affairs of institutional and private life, access to in- formation on current federal laws, regula- tions, standards, statistics, raw and repack- aged data is becoming more crucial to wider strata of population than ever. There should be access to this informa- tion by topics in disciplinary as well as in- terdisciplinary areas. Since the Guide has no subject index and the title index is not a permuted one, the user has to resort to his familiarity with agencies and their con- cern with various areas of human endeavor when using the Agency index as a poor substitute for the subject approach. [There are some inconsistencies and er- rors in the bibliographic listings and in- dexes. In the Agency index (v.4, p.1040), under Council we find Environmental Quality. On p.1043 we find Environmental Quality Council. Both entries carry the same SuDocs number. Actually the en- tries should clearly distinguish between two different agencies: the Council on En- vironmental Quality (established in 1970) and the Environmental Quality Council (established in 1969, renamed and later terminated in 1970) ]. In conclusion, the improvements in this new edition of the Guide outweigh the flaws and shortcomings. A further improve- ment could be made by including, in case of government periodicals, the indexing and abstracting services where these peri- odicals are included. This device would be invaluable for both selection and reference purposes. In the meantime, the Guide is recommended for use in medium and larger libraries of all types. If there is still a li- brarian to whom public documents repre- sent "a despised class of books," he should find them less despising because of this expedient key.-Marta L. Dosa, School of Library Science, Syracuse University Spyers-Duran, Peter, and Gore, Daniel, eds. Advances in UnderstaRding Ap- proval and Gathering Plans in Aca- demic Libraries. International Seminar on Approval and Gathering Plans in Large and Medium Size Academic Li- braries, 2d, Western Michigan U niver- sity, 1969. Kalamazoo: Western Michi- gan University, 1970. 220p. When approval plans first appeared on the library scene in the early 1960s, only libraries with sizeable book budgets could consider having an English-language ap- proval plan. The questions facing the li- braries using and contemplating approval -