College and Research Libraries


490 I College & Research Libraries • November 1973 

liberate attempt to exclude materials that 
have appeared in recently published collec-
tions." For a teacher or student of technical 
services to use a reader of this nature effec-
tively, it must contain all outstanding per-
tinent materials no matter where else they 
have appeared nor how recently. This ap-
proach, then, makes the volume less useful 
as a text but important as a supplementary 
resource. 

Mr. Applebaum has done an admirable 
job in presenting the historical perspective 
to the basic problems which are facing us 
in technical services today. The discussions 
on cooperative cataloging and Dewey's clas-
sification system, at the first Conference of 
the American Library Association in 1876 
and the presentation and discussion of cata-
loging at the London Conference of Li-
brarians in 1877, are classics. The remain-
der of the volume covers the areas of ac-
quisitions; bibliographic control; coopera-
tive and centralized processing endeavors; 
and future prospects. 

Who would be better than Mr. Apple-
baum to select outstanding articles in the 
area of acquisitions, from policies to blan-
ket-order plans, from administration to fu-
ttue trends? Articles by Metcalf, Downs, 
Veaner, and the excellent symposium 
chaired by Perry Morrison are good exam-
ples . 

The section on bibliographic control is 
less cohesive. Certainly all articles included 
are important ones but perhaps not all 
should be included here. For instance the 
Introduction to the Anglo-American Cata-
loging Rules must have been read at least 
once, if not a dozen times, by all students 
of cataloging-probably all have their own 
copies-and the articles on serials by Clara 
Brown, delightful as it is, doesn't really 
seem to fit into the sequence. Otherwise it 
contains a good representation of articles 
on bibliographic control of monographs and 
serials. One previously unpublished article 
on "Book Catalogs" by Scott Allison, is a 
very good state-of-the-art paper. Classic 
pieces such as the one by W. W. Bishop, 
as well as current deliberations such as the 
ones on the National Serials Data Program, 
are valuable items for discussion. 

Cooperative and centralized processing 
is an area with which Mr. Applebaum has 
been very intimately involved for several 

years and has used his expertise in bringing 
together a chronology of developments on 
this subject. 

The final section deals almost exclusively 
with MARC and its national and interna-
tional implications-those being the solving 
of some important problems in technical 
services. 

Particular criticism could be leveled at 
the volume for the exclusion of any discus-
sion on nonprint materials, their acquisition, 
storage, and accessibility.-Robert D. Stu-
earl, Graduate School of Librarianship, U ni-
versity of Denver~ Colorado. 

!~Pope, S. Elspeth. The Time-Lag in Cata-
loging. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 
1973.209 p. 
This book is the result of the author's 

doctoral dissertation at the University of 
Pittsburgh. It is primarily concerned with 
the attempts made by the Library of Con-
gress and American publishers over a long 
period of time to bring books and catalog 
copy together quickly. These efforts cul-
minated finally in the Cataloging-in-Source 
program ( 1958-59) and its reincarnation 
in the Cataloging-in-Publication program 
( 1971). 

The aims of the study were ( 1) to dis-
cover whether the various programs at the 
Library of Congress were sufficient to de-
crease the time-lag in cataloging, and ( 2) 
whether it is possible for the Library of 
Congress to accept bibliographical data as 
provided by publisher's catalogs. 

To answer the first question, a statistical 
sample of 5 percent of American trade pub-
lications in 1969 was taken from the N a-
tional Union Catalog. The selected entries 
were checked against the time of their ap-
pearance in Copyright Office records, Li-
brary of Congress cards, MARC tape input, 
and Publisher's Weekly. Programs were de-
signed and data fed to a computer. The re-
sults were compared to an earlier study 
done by Roger Greer in 1961, and it was 
found that, in spite of the various attempts 
which had been made by the Library of 
Congress to expedite the cataloging of 
books, the time needed to get cataloging 
information had in fact increased. The full 
details of the Greer study, an unpublished 
doctoral dissertation, are not given, so it is 
difficult to assess the validity of the com-



parison. However, taking only Pope's work 
into consideration, the median time for 
catalog copy to appear in 1969 was ninety-
one days. Whether or not the time-lag has 
increased since 1961, this would still make 
it difficult for a library to decide whether 
to wait for LC copy or do original catalog-
ing. In fact, Pope concludes at this point 
that the Library of Congress is incapable 
of closing the time gap. 

In regard to the second question, a com-
parison was made between entries as they 
appeared in prepublication sales catalogs 
and subsequent Library of Congress entries. 
The agreement between the two on most 
items was remarkably high, and the one 
item which showed the most discrepancy, 
the collation statement, is not even present-
ly included in the CIP record. It is in this 
area that Pope has the most to contribute. 
Elsewhere in the book it is pointed out that 
delays in producing catalog copy result 
from a book being "cataloged" many times 
-by the publisher, by the Copyright Of-
fice, by the Library of Congress, and by in-
dividual libraries. Pope feels that, in as 
much as the Library of Congress is willing 
to accept intact cataloging provided by 
foreign countries, it should also be willing 
to accept cataloging by publishers. This 
would be more likely to happen if a 
mutually acceptable manual of bibliograph-
ic description were to be adopted. 

As of this review, the CIP project has yet 
to be fully evaluated, although there are in-
dications that it is becoming more viable. 
This is shown by the fact that slightly more 
than 50 percent of the American book pub-
lishing output is represented. If publishers 
find it worth their while to cooperate, and 
if libraries across the country are willing to 
accept CIP copy, then this book will simply 
be a record of past failures. Nevertheless, 
Pope's extensive research forms a basis for 
any future studies in this area.-Dianne ]. 
Ellsworth, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 
Connecticut. 

j-The University-The Library. Papers pre-
sented by Samuel Rothstein, Richard 
Blackwell, Archibald MacLeish at York 
University, Toronto, on the Occasion of 
the Dedication of the Scott Library, 30 
October, 1971. Oxford: Shakespeare 
Head Press, 1972. 62 p. 

Recent Publications I 491 

This slender, impeccably printed volume 
contains, in addition to the essays by the 
three authors mentioned in the title, a pref-
ace and introduction by Thomas F. O'Con-
nell, and brief biographical sketches of the 
three authors who were recipients of hon-
orary degrees at the colloquy. 

Dedication of a new library building is 
a highly important affair in an institution 
of learning, and perhaps even more so at 
York University, because of its comparative 
youthfulness and rapidity of growth-both 
in student enrollment and in library re-
sources. 

The three chief participants in the dedi-
cation represented different but allied pro-
fessions. They addressed themselves to the 
topic: "The U niveristy-The Library." 
Samuel Rothstein, library educator, sketched 
briefly some of the academic and cur-
ricular changes of the last century in 
higher education, which have led to the 
rise of a trained, service-directed class of 
professionals in modem libraries. Richard 
Blackwell spoke of the close dependence 
existing between librarian and bookseller, 
drawing with charm and discernment upon 
his experiences with the firm of B. H. 
Blackwell. 

Archibald MacLeish, poet, was con-
cerned with the importance of a book col-
lection as more than a mere institutional 
statistic. One paragraph quoted from his re-
marks may suffice to indicate his affirma-
tions in the essay, "The Premise of Mean-
ing": 

For the existence of a library, the fact of 
its existence, is, in itself and of itself, an 
assertion-a proposition nailed like Lu-
ther's to the door of time. By standing 
where it does at the centre of the univer-
sity-which is to say at the centre of our 
intellectual lives-with its books in a cer-
tain order on its shelves and its cards in 
a certain structure in their cases, the true 
library asserts that there is indeed a "mys-
tery of things." Or, more precisely, it as-
serts that the reason why the «things" com-
pose a mystery is that they seem to mean: 
that they fall, when gathered together, 
into a kind of relationship, a kind of 
wholeness, as though all these different 
and dissimilar reports, these bits and 
pieces of experience, manuscripts in bot-
tles, messages from long before, from deep 
within from miles beyond, belonged to-
gether and might, if understood together,