College and Research Libraries


provide the reader with a certain measure 
of media wisdom. 

Two areas noticeably not addressed in 
this compilation are networking and copy-
right. Articles relating to these issues would 
be particularly appropriate and timely. The 
usefulness of this book for most librarians, 
and particularly academic librarians, is ques-
tionable . The few meaningful articles could 
easily be researched through Library Liter-
ature. A much preferred compilation of arti-
cles relating to nonprint media is Margaret 
Chisholm's Reader in Media, Technology, 
and Libraries. -David B. Walch , State 
University of New York , College at Buffalo. 

Allerton Park Institute, 22d, 1976. Chang-
ing Times, Changing Libraries. GeorgeS. 
Bonn and Sylvia Faibisoff, editors. 
Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois 
Graduate School of Library Science, 
1978. 166p. $8. (Available from: Publica-
tions Office, Graduate School of Library 
Science, 249 Armory Bldg. , Champaign, 
IL 61820.) 
This is a good and useful book as it must 

have been a good and useful conference. 
The University of Illinois Graduate School 
of Library Science has, for years , been. of 
real service to the profession in holding its 
annual Allerton Park Institute. Judging from 
the papers presented here, this one, held in 
the autumn of 1976, may be of longer-
lasting value than some of the others. Cer-
tainly, two years later, there is almost no-
thing in it (with the possible exceptions of 
the papers on technology) that is or will be 
immediately dated. 

The introduction , written by George S. 
Bonn and Sylvia Faibisoff, both library 
school faculty members , neatly summarizes 
what was covered. The concept of the insti-
tute , a long look ahead , was a legitimate 
one considering the "possible social, scien-
tific , and technological trends that may 
shape our lives as the United States enters 
its third century. " The effort was worth-
while ; the various papers presented by es-
tablished , if not famous , men and women 
are well-organized, cogent, and generally 
easy to understand without being simplistic. 

Much that these people shared with us 
should have been at least familiar to those 
who gathered in Champaign-Urbana's tallest 

Recent Publications I 501 

hotel (not in the elegant Allerton House in 
the middle of the cornfields), but it is valu-
able , occasionally, to pull even revealed 
wisdom together in a handy, well-edited 
book for distribution to those of our col-
leagues who may not read much, who may 
not be attuned to what our society is be-
coming, and who want their information 
palatably packaged. 

The format used was to have people of 
the caliber of Kenneth W. Thompson , pro-
fessor of government and foreign affairs at 
Virginia; Clement Bezold of the Antioch 
School of Law's Institute of Alternative Fu-
tures ; Ralph Smith ·of the Urban Institute; 
Bruce Sherwood of Illinois's Computer-
based Education Research Laboratory; R. 
Lynn Carroll of the National Science Foun-
dation's Office of Government and Public 
Programs; Harold Shane, university profes-
sor of education at Indiana University; 
Helena Z . Lopata of Loyola University of 
Chicago's Center for the Comparative Study 
of Social Roles; and Donald P. Ely of Syra-
cuse University' s Center for the Study of 
Information and Education present their 
papers. 

These papers were followed by the re-
spective responses of Jesse H. Shera, Eileen 
D. Cooke, Jane Cooney, Gerald R. Brong, 
John P . McDonald, Crystal M. Bailey , 
Gerald R. Shields, and Hugh C. Atkinson , 
librarians well known to most of us . The 
papers are grouped under subheadings-
some causes of change , some results of 
change, and the process of change. 

In a short review it is not possible to 
analyze and evaluate each paper and each 
response, but it might be noted that 
Thompson's contribution , which reviewed 
the framework of our society in its historical 
perspective, is excellent. Bezold on the fu-
ture of government is both provocative and 
even frightening (at least to this registered 
Whig!) , and includes in its appendixes ex-
tremely interesting material on futur e 
trends in government and "scenarios for the 
future" drawn from his extensive research. 

Indeed, the papers of these two men , and 
the responses of Jesse Shera ·and Eileen 
Cooke, which constitute about a third of the 
book, are the most valuable part of the 
whole. Smith on "Prospects for Women in 
the Paid Labor Market" and Lopata on 



502 I College & Research Libraries • November 1978 

"Changes in Sexual Identities" are , with 
comments by Jane Cooney and Gerald 
Shields, interesting, but like Atkinson and 
Ely on the process of change, the material 
is somewhat familiar if well encapsuled. 
Shane's paper, based on his own research 
and the opinions of leaders in education and 
futurists, leads one with ideals of excellence 
almost to despairing conclusions but is well 
worth reading. 

The presentations of the nonlibrarians 
are, on the whole, generally more thought-
ful, more scholarly, and more intellectually 
satisfying than the responses by the 
librarians-perhaps because the latter had 
little time to study them and, in any case, 
were not really expected to write scholarly 
critiques, but rather to respond in public, 
almost extemporaneously, to them. As such, 
they reflect a much more immediate 
perspective , rather than a futuristic one. 
There were also a few comments on our col-
leagues that jarred a bit as, for example, I 
have found librarians, in the pragmatic tra-
dition inherent in the profession , to be 
rather more receptive to change than we 
are given credit for, and certainly more so 
than, say, the faculties and students many of 
us serve. 

I was disappointed a bit in what I saw as 
a curious lack of value considerations in the 
discussions (excepting Thompson's), even 
though I recognize that our society is in-
creasingly valueless. There were, rather , 
perhaps as there should have been, simply 
·the authors' perceptions of reality: "This is 
what we think we know .... " But this dis-
interested approach seems to imply to this 
reviewer an almost fatuous optimism which 
I believe misplaced. 

There was little recognition of the fact 
that changes in librarianship, while of both 
immediate and future importance to us, are 
very small beer in the grand design (if there 
is a grand design) of the future. There was 
little sense of the decline of the West, if 
you will, of the graying of society, of the 
submergence of the individual and the de-
cline of individualism , of the present and fu-
ture lack of privacy, and of the diminishing 
ability of modern men and women to con-
trol their own destinies. 

It is not fair to review a book for what it 
is not , of course, and even in the re-

gimented life of, say, China, I suppose li-
braries function and librarians may even be 
happy in their work. Western man would 
not-will not!-be so happy in our world of 
the future. Perhaps he doesn't deserve to 
be ... . -Stuart Forth, The Pennsylvania 
State University, University Park. 

The Library of Congress in Perspective. A 
Volume Based on the Reports of the 1976 
Librarian's Task Force and Advisory 
Groups. Edited by John Y. Cole. New 
York: Bowker, 1978. 281p. $21.95. LC 
78-5000. ISBN 0-8352-1055-3. 
When a library engages in self-study, the 

first area of investigation tends to be the 
historical context of the institution. This his-
torical understanding of the forces giving 
shape to an organization becomes particu-
larly important when the institution is the 
Library of Congress. In 1976 , Daniel 
Boorstin , then newly appointed Librarian of 
Congress, ordered a self-study of the library 
by creating a task force on goals , organiza-
tion, and planning. Over a one-year period, 
the task force, chaired by John Y. Cole, in-
vestigated the library's past, discussed the 
present with a large number of staff, and 
outlined recommendations for its future. 
The findings and recommendations com-
prise the bulk of this volume. 

The book serves two purposes: it provides 
a history of the Library of Congress , and it 
outlines the recommendations of the task 
force. The historical section focuses on the 
four earlier organizational assessments con-
ducted by the Library of Congress in 1940, 
1947, 1962, and 1967. The results of these 
studies indicate the political and economic 
trends that have contributed to the charac-
ter of the Library of Congress. 

The question of the appropriate role for 
the Library of Congress has been haunting 
the various Librarians of Congress since the 
beginning. The discussion of the legislation 
and recommendations of various groups is a 
particularly noteworthy contribution of this 
publication. Equally useful is the chronol-
ogy of the most important events in the in-
stitution's history , beginning with its estab-
lishment in Washington in 1800. 

The findings and recommendations of the 
1976 task force have been available for some 
time now, and that section of the book is