College and Research Libraries 374 I College & Research Libraries • September 1974 ed, but unfortunately, are carried to ex- tremes-such as thirty-three pages of tar- gets used for microfilming. Such examples illustrate the attention to detail apparent throughout this manual. Criticism of specific procedures would be both unfair and unwise. In the larger context, many ideas contained within the manual are applicable to other archival in- stitutions. Yet, a large degree of success with archival organization is rooted to the pragmatic qualities exhibited by the head of the archives department. Thus, proce- dures that might be applfcable to specific institutions with certain characteristics may not be workable at another institution. Fu- ture archival procedural writers hoping to glean insight into archival organization and processes should keep in mind that this manual represents procedures developed for a medical archives and that such an archi- val collection is somewhat restricted in both scope and size compared to many college and university collections. Nonetheless, the manual will provide guidance to those at- tempting to produce a procedural manual for their own institution-especially if used in conjunction with Forms Manual, pub- lished by the College and University Ar- chives Committee of the Socfety of Ameri- can Archivists ( 1973). One hopes that ar- chives with procedural manuals will re- spond positively to Washington University Medical Archives' suggestion to make them avai'lable for outside examination. The crea- tion of more such manuals will help stan- dardize procedures and will lead directly to the improved control, service, and bene- fit of an archives-and most importantly- consistency.-Charles R. McClure, Head, History-Government Department, U niver- sity of Texas at El Paso Library. Boyer, Calvin James. The Doctoral Disser- tation as an Information Source: A Study of Scientific Information Flow. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1973. 129p. $5.00. Libraries acquire for use by their patrons only a small fraction of the doctoral disser- tations written annually in the United States. If the research is not acquired ex- tensively in its original format, do disserta- tions serve as information sources in other traditional formal communication channels of open literature? That question is addressed in this mono- graph, which was originally written for a Ph.D. at the University of Texas. The in- vestigation was undertaken to determine to what extent dissertations serve as infor- mation sources and what are the character- istics of assimilation and diffusion patterns of dissertation contents. Mter all, with the average cost of each dissertation in the sci- ences being $62,000, shouldn't the findings be available to a wider audience? Using the proper research methodology of defining the population and then selecting the sam- ple, the author chose the four disciplines of botany, chemical engineering, chemistry, and psychology to prove his point. He fur- ther refined his sample to three universi- ties, and his final sample included 441 dis- sertations. The original portion of the study is preceded by a brief history of the disser- tation and a more lengthy review of related literature. Boyer found through his literature search that dissertations as a form of literature rep- resent a miniscule percentage of cited liter- ature and that they represent an even more miniscule percentage of materials acquired by libraries. In his research he found tliat most disser- tation-based materials, in the sciences, ap- pear in journals with an average of 1.43 articles per dissertation. Fifty-three percent of those had not been cited, and of those cited nearly two-thirds of the citations were made by persons known to the dissertation author, including 22 percent self-citations. One weakness of the research, readily ad- mitted by the author, is that examination was made of the formal written communi- cation channels only-including journal ar- ticles, bodks, or chapters of books. It com- pletely excludes oral communication in seminars, conferences, symposia, interper- sonal communications, and closed literature such as preprints, reprints, and technical reports. Therefore this study covers only one part, perhaps the less important one, in the communication process. Another point which should not be over- looked in the information How is that, par- ticularly in the sciences, the value of the content may be transitory or the quality may be questionable. J ,. ' The author has posed an important ques- tion and examined one aspect of it. Hope- fully someone will take the topic from there and examine other aspects.-Robert D. Stuearl, Graduate School of Librarianship, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado. Fussier, Herman H. Research Libraries and Technology: A Report to the Sloan Foundation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1973. 91p. $5.95. In 1970 the Sloan Foundation estab- lished a program in educational technology which included "library technology" as one of the areas to be studied. Dr. Herman H. Fussier of the University of Chicago was commissioned to do this study. Upon re- ceipt of the report the foundation felt that it deserved general circulation. The pub- lished work is basically the same report that was submitted as an "internal docu- ment" not addressed to librarians (pref- ace) . The question remains, "What is the purpose of the report and to whom is it ad- dressed?'' The report contains the thoughts of Dr. Fussier, a nationally known and respected library technologist, concerning some of the problems facing large, research-oriented university libraries. The title is slightly mis- leading since the author has been self-selec- tive in reporting on only a few problems and issues. In addition, there are problems with the report's focus and scope, as well as a scarcity of definitions of frequently used terms. After a nondescript foreword and an ane- mic preface, chapter one, "Libraries and Technology from Several Perspectives," contains a review of a few selected studies of technologies used by libraries within the last decade. Chapter two, "Some Current Aspects of the Large University Library," switches from an emphasis on specific tech- nologies to problems involved in library costs. This is the only chapter containing tables, all of which are extracted from exist- ing reports and studies. As noted by the author, a new book by Professor W. J. Baumol, entitled Economics of Academic Libraries, was about to be published. It is now available, and it contains a more com- prehensive treatment of this topic. Chapter three, "Bibliographical and Library Process- Recent Publications I 375 ing Functions," is seven pages in length and attempts to do the impossible by com- bining a discussion of bibliographic access and library processing functions. References to more detailed accounts covering these topics are lacking. Chapter four, "Shared Resources, Photocopying, and Facsimile Transmission," combines the conceptual topic of shared resources with the specific technologies of reprography and facsimile transmission; it is at best confusing and at worst inadequate. In addition, there are three paragraphs devoted to copyright problems. Chapter five, "The Computer and the Library," is a sound general discussion of how computer technology can be used to confuse and defuse problems in the man- agement of information systems. Chapter six, "Examples of Computer Applications in Library Operations and Information Ac- cess," complements the preceding chapter by giving a brief description of specific lo- cations: Columbia, NLM, Northwestern, OCLC, Ohio State, MIT, Stanford, and Chicago. Each description was based on in- formation supplied by the institution. Chap- ter seven, "Some General Observations and Conclusions," amplifies the confusion con- cerning the focus of the report. On page 73 the author states that the report is "limited essentially to the problems of literature and information access" when, in fact, the em- phasis is on internal operations and func- tions of the library. Following the last chap- ter there is a section containing fifty-nine references, "acknowledgements," and an in- dex. The index contains at least one error (p.8g;._National Advisory Commission on Libraries, 18 should be 17). In conclusion, the author has made a re- port to the Sloan Foundation; he has raised many relevant and poignant points concern- ing the problems and issues facing the large, research-oriented university library. There are useful parts to this report, espe- cially the up-to-date references made to more complete and empirically based stud- ies and reviews; however, these parts are interspersed with less useful monologues. The remaining unresolved question in this reviewer's mind is, "Who will read this in- ternal document?" This book is recommended to the reader with the initiative, interest, background, and time to analyze the author's opinions