College and Research Libraries 414 I College & Research Libraries • September 1978 Division and the Scientific, Technical, and Medical Group of Publishers had ~equested the report to learn the effects of interlibrary lending and the attendant supply of photo- copies on these decisions. In 1977 250 academic, research, and industrial libraries in the United Kingdom answered a 16-page questionnaire. The results showed stronge·r correlations between financial indicators and changes in subscriptions than between interlibrary lending and changes in subscriptions. Of the libraries responding, 57 percent did not receive enough money to purchase all the required journals. Financial pressure forced 85 percent to trim redundant items from their acquisitions lists. Librarians then used interlibrary loans to offset any loss of infor- mation to the user because of dropped sub- scriptions as well as to supply back issues, material not handled by a particular library, and a range of new journals. The British Library Lending Division had enabled 80 percent of the librarians to expand their services to users and made 74 percent of the libraries more flexible in meeting the needs of users. From lists of possible factors related to purchasing new subscriptions, dropping some, and cancelling particular journals, user-oriented responses ranked highest in each case. Financial matters held second place whenever a subscription was not re- newed. In a section on management inves- tigating the practical aspects of decision making, librarians also rated the value of the journal to users as a major determinant. A small separate study attempted to dis- cover the percentage of loans for journals that had been cancelled. Of 1, 680 cases where definite information on acquisitions was available, only 2. 74 percent of the loans were positively identifiable as replacements for dropped subscriptions. - Clear bar graphs, numerous tables, and detailed explanations in an easy-to-read format add to the intelligibility of this study. Woodward makes a few comparisons with the situation in the United States. Ap- pendixes include both the original ques- tionnaire and the loan tracking study. Librarians here are making decisions to purchase or to cancel journals daily. There- fore, this carefully analyzed statistical study will be valuable for periodicals publishers and librarians in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, especially to those planning and awaiting our National Periodicals Center. -Sister Alma Marie Walls, Immaculata College, Immaculata, Pennsylvania. Nicholas, David, and Ritchie, Maureen. Literature and Bibliometrics. London: Clive Bingley; Hamden, Conn.: Linnet Books, 1978. 183p. $12. LC 77-20135. ISBN 0-85157-228-6 Bingley; 0-208- 01541-8 Linnet. This tantalizingly brief British book makes it clear that bibliometrics embraces much more than footnote ceunting but that cita- tion analysis is still the backbone of the statistical study of written communication. Following a 1969 definition by Prichart, it limits the field to written communication, excluding the application of the same method to auditory, pictorial, or electronic transmittal of information via television, radio, or motion picture. Although not always clearly written, this is an important and needed handbook if for no other reason than that it represents the first comprehensive treatment of statistical methodology applied to the literatures of science, social science, and the humanities since Hulme's work published in 1923. It is also important in giving insight into the methods used by, and some of the sig- nificant findings of, the massive Design of Information in the Social Sciences (DISISS) project at the University of Bath in En- gland. Most, . but not all, of the examples of bibliometric methods and applications given in the book are from the DISISS project. Thus the emphasis is on the social sciences from an English point of view, sup- plemented by examples from science-e. g., from D. J. De Sola Price and (to a lesser extent than one might expect) Eugene Garfield. Bibliometric analysis of the litera- ture of librarianship is represented by the work of Zhignesse and Osgood. Although the authors clearly advocate the application of bibliometrics to the humanities, the only examples discussed in- volve the citation of historical, literary, or artistic literature by social scientists or sci- entists. Due consideration is given to the large project of the American Psychological Association, which studied the structure and use of the literature of that subject in the 1950s and early 1960s. The first part of the book is devoted to definitions, classifi'cation, and discussion of the problems involved in using various bib- liographic elements in the analysis of pri- mary and secondary literatures. This discus- sion merely focuses on bibliometrics infor- mation already familiar to anyone who has done library cataloging. The middle part, beginning with chapter five on the size and growth of the literature, is the meat of the book, because it deals with specific applica- tions of bibliometrics. The final part is a re- view of standard statistical methods, includ- ing the application of computers, graphic presentations, and sampling. An appendix includes a glossary, a list of suggestions for projects in the field (which is also a useful summary of the scope of the subject), a list of references cited in the text, and a brief list of suggested further reading. The list of DISISS research reports (p.179) is useful inasmuch as libraries may have missed acquiring some or all of these rather fugitive research reports. Although one might have wished for a more detailed text (the treatment of content analysis, for example, is inadequate), most research libraries will wish to have this book. Interest in bibliometrics extends well beyond library and information science. The authors are of the opinion-and this re- viewer agrees-that statistical methods of literature analysis are spreading from the sciences and social sciences to the humanities. In the field of history, the rise of cliometric analysis will certainly involve the allied field of bibliometrics. Bibliometric analysis of Nicholas and Ritchie's book would be difficult and proba- bly unrewarding inasmuch as only twenty- eight references are cited. One would come to the invalid conclusion that nothing was done in this field between Hulme's work in 1923 and Louittit' s in 1955. The numerous citation studies done at the Graduate Li- brary School by, for example, Fussier in chemistry and physics (1948), McAnally in history (1951), and Hintz in botany (1952) are ignored. Nor is the more recent work (1971) by Lamb at Case Western Reserve Recent Publications I 415 University in the literature of mathematics mentioned or cited. As one might expect, the examples drawn from the work of Maurice Line and his col- leagues (including the two authors of this book) at Bath are interesting in themselves. For example, the discussion of obsolescence in literatures (p.122) will give aid and com- fort to those who oppose "no-growth" policies in libraries-i.e., the discarding or storing off-campus of older, presumably lit- tle used, materials. The authors maintain that statistics showing decline in use of ma- terials with age have been "exaggerated or misinterpreted." One of the reasons given for this is that the corpus of a literature published in, say, 1950, is typically only half that of 1960. Thus a given number of citations or library charge-outs would be a larger proportion of the 1950 than of the 1960 holdings. The other argument is less clear to this reviewer. It involved a distinc- tion between "updating" and "basic" uses of a given item. The former declines rapidly, but the latter remains constant or decays more slowly. In short, this is an important manual in its own right, another indicator of the sig- nificance of the Bath University DISISS project, and is the only recent book in the field.-Perry D. Morrison, University of Oregon, Eugene. Arnold, Denis V. The Management of the Information Department. A Grafton Book. Institute of Information Scientists, Monograph Series. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, in association with the Institute of Information Scientists, 1977. 143p. $12.50. LC 76-43375. ISBN 0-89158-716-0. This book is an honest attempt to bring together the principles and practices for the successful management of an information department in an industrial organization. The material presented is grouped into seven chapters dealing with communication patterns, management, planning and de- sign, organization, coordination, control, and analysis. Each chapter has a bibliogra- phy. The treatment of the various topics cov- ered is brief but to the point. They include the objectives and duties of an information