College and Research Libraries


but on page 99. This was difficult to ascertain 
from the index; it was not found there under 
"collected acts" but only under "association 
agreements,·· for which two pages were cited. 
In general, however, the index is good. 

This volume is important not only to Euro-
pean Communities depositories but to any re-
search institution involved with studies of 
Western European political and economic 
affairs.-Carolyn W. Kohler, University of 
Iowa, Iowa City. 

Williams, Patrick, and Pearce, Joan Thornton. 
The Vital Network: A Theory of Communi-
cation and Society. Contributions in Librar-
ianship and Information Science, number 
25. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 
1978. ll1p. $13.95. LC 77-94757. ISBN 
0-313-20324-5. ISSN 0084-9243. 
Since bibliographic and information net-

works are topics of consuming interest in the 
profession today, many librarians may acquire 
this title in the hopes that it will provide some 
insight into the elusive goal we all seek-a vital 
network. These hopes will be disappointed; 
the subtitle, A Theory of Communication and 
Society, is more descriptive of the book's con-
tents. 

Some librarians who acquire this work as a 
result of its misleading title may find that doing 
so is a rewarding mistake. The purpose of the 
work is to present a theory of macrocommuni-
cation systems that would provide librarians 
and other communication professionals a theo-
retical model from which to derive values and 
priorities. 

Briefly, the theory is a simplified derivative 
from the works of George Herbert Mead and 
Lev Vygotsky. It starts with the position that 
human intelligence .is the product oflanguage; 
the "cultural biosystem," which encompasses 
science, literature, and social and political in-
stitutions, is essentially a communications sys-
tem. The ability to communicate is the founda-
tion of human existence, and communication 
is the ultimate human activity. Naturally, the 
theory reflects well on the significance of the 
role of "communication professiona~s. ·· 

After establishing and to some extent justify-
ing this broad framework, the authors analyze 
three communication industries-entertain-
ment, journalism, and education-in terms of 
their roles in American society. These chap-
ters present a series of observations that at 

Recent Publications I 185 

times are interesting and provocative but pro-
vide little systematic evidence in support of 
the authors' theory. Basically, Williams and 
Pearce have succeeded in establishing a point 
of view and presenting a few examples. Al-
though the point of view is held with some 
consistency, it is not developed systematically 
in sufficient depth to warrant the name of 
"theory.·· 

The approach of this book must be consid-
ered somewhat oblique if it is aimed specifi-
cally at our librarians. Librarianship is treated 
in a brief postscript, but no attempt is made to 
establish the relevance of the theory to librar-
ianship in the course of presenting the theory 
in the main text. In light of the series in which 
this title is published, it would have been ap-
propriate to treat librarianship at least to the 
same degree as entertainment, journalism, 
and education. Had such an effort been made, 
the authors might have come clos~r to achiev-
ing their goal. 

Nevertheless, Williams and Pearce have 
produced a book that is provocative enough 
that it may be of interest to librarians who have 
the time to indulge their reflective moods on 
the role of the profession in society.-]oe A. 
Hewitt, University of North Carolina at 
Chapel Hill. 

Stem, Madeleine B. BooksandBookPeoplein 
19th-Century America. N e~ York: Bowker, 
1978. 341p. $25. LC 78-12197. ISBN 
0-8352-1109-6. 
For almost four decades Madeleine Stern's 

well-written essays and anecdotes have graced 
the pages of journals and monographs, re-
minding us of the rich heritage of our nation· s 
book trade. Some twenty-three of those essays 
are now brought together in this volume, 
which is well designed in a manner appro-
priate to its subject. The resulting medley 
should provide several ~venings of agreeable 
reading for anyone interested in the subject. · 

Virtually the entire contents of the book 
have appeared elsewhere. Readers who re-
member Stern's Imprints on Histdry (Indiana 
University Press, 1956) might choose to think 
of this book as its second volume, so similar are 
the styles and contents of the two, were it not 
that fully fifty pages from the earlier title are 
reprinted here. The integrity of the subject of 
Books and Book People, however, and the fact 
that some of its pieces are reproduced from 



186 I College & Research Libraries • March 1979 

sources not widely available are probably rea-
son enough for publishing it here as a collec-
tion. 

The author manages to find a remarkable 
diversity of anecdotes and events within the 
single theme of the volume. There are chap-
ters on the earlv Franco-American bookseller 
Joseph Nancrede, Elizabeth Peabody's cir-
culating library of foreign literature in Boston 
near mid-century, the murder of printer 
Samuel Adams by publisher John Caldwell 
Colt in New York in 1841 , the pseudonymous 
Gothic novels of Louisa May Alcott, the first 
fifty years of Publishers W eekly , and many 
more. 

There is, however, a kind of imbalance in 
the book that may prove bothersome to 
some-an imbalance not of quality but rather 
of intent. Some essays are complete in them-
selves, such as the excellent seventy-page 
biography of Nancrede and the several cameo 
lives of early upstate New York printers. 
Others, however, are not complete at all but 
seem to serve only as a reason for bringing out 
a very specific fact or circumstance; they rep-
resent beginnings, or middles , or ends , but 
not all three in sequence as required by 
Aristotle. Somehow they leave the reader 
with an unquenched thirst for the full tales. 

Stern is a careful scholar, and her work is 
both thorough and well documented; yet she 
is more a good antiquarian storyteller than a 
historian. She seeks no great significance in 
the events she re cords . Significance, she · 
seems to be saying, is in the eye of the behold-
er. Book people in twentieth-century America 
will like . . . Book People in 19th-Century 
America . -David Kaser, Indiana University , 
Bloomington. 

Fjrulbrant, Nancy , and Steve nson , Malcolm . 
User Education in Libraries. London: Clive 
Bingley; Hamden, Conn.: Linnet Books, 
1978. 173p. $10.50. LC 77-19192. ISBN 
0-85157-251-0 Bingley; 0-208-01664-3 Lin-
net. 
This book has a great deal to offer those 

interested in library instruction-especially 
those who might be setting up or reevaluating 
their own library instruction programs. 

However, useful insights or approaches are 
sometimes lost in the midst of sections that are 

· frankly tedious and repetitive. Much of the 
discussion of existing programs is centered on 

those in Great Britain and Scandinavia, where 
the authors are librarians, with an overview of 
user education in the U.S. also included. 

The authors provide a good discussion of 
library goals and objectives for library user 
education, questioning the premise that li-
brarians actually recognize what students 
really need-or want-to know about the li-
brary. They stress the need for student input 
into the formation of instruction programs 
from the beginning. A fine overview of teach-
ing methods and nonprint media for library 
user education is described in chapter 3, run-
ning the gamut from conventional tours to 
computer-assisted instruction . 

Probably the most useful section for Ameri-
can readers is the excellent discussion of Great 

. Britain's SCONUL (Standing Conference of 
National and University Libraries) scheme . 
This working group was formed to encourage 
cooperation in the production of slide/tape 
guides to different library tools to be used in 
libraries throughout the country. 

Although there were necessarily some prob-
lems with the SCONUL arrangement, some 
thirty-five libraries were involved in the pro-
duction of slide/tape programs ultimately used 
throughout Great Britain and beyond. Some 
thirty briefly annotated descriptions of slide/ 
tape programs created by SCONUL are in-
cluded. This type of cooperation might be 
used as a model for American libraries that 
often duplicate efforts as far as the production 
of costly and time-consuming slide/tape pro-
grams go. 

A highlight of the book is the discussion of 
the evaluation of user education programs. 
The authors insist that evaluation is the key to 
rational decision making-a step that librar-
ians still have a difficult time integrating into 
the total process of user education. Programs 
tend to be born and die without ever being 
evaluated, or evaluated on the wrong terms. 
What is often judged is , not whether the stu-
dents learned something, but if they "liked" a 
particular slide/tape presentation, for exam-
ple. 

Probably the weakest sections of the book 
are those dealing with in-depth descriptions of 
existing instruction programs-at the Univer:. 
sity of Sussex (England), Chalmers University 
of Technology (Sweden), Roskilde University 
Centre (Denmark)-and a general overview of 
programs in the United Kingdom, Scan-