College and Research Libraries


390 I College & Research Libraries • July 1979 

not about collection development but is a 
compilation of fourteen previously unpub-
lished, annotated subject bibliographies (or 
bibliographical essays in some cases). The 
work is focused on "the needs of a medium 
sized public library or undergraduate library 
clientele," and the bibliographies, designed 
to serve librarians building collections for 
general readers, should be very useful. The 
book's major strength is that it contains 
good bibliographies on areas of current 
interest-microcomputers, the aged, 
bioethics, farming-as well as such popular 
topics as careers, fantasy, dogs, and science 
fiction. -William Schenck, University of 
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Schaefer, Barbara Kirsch. Using the 
Mathematical Literature: A Practical 
Guide. Books in Library and Information 
Science, v.25. New York: Marcel Dekker, 
1979. 141p. $19.75. LC 78-24537. ISBN 
0-8247-6675-X. 
Here is another book written by a librar-

ian for librarians who need access to the 
mathematics literature. I suppose it is ask-
ing too much to hope that real library users 
might find it and enjoy it: these nonlibra-
rians might be helped by its simple, direct 
descriptions of classification systems and 
card catalogs and a careful explanation of 
what Mathematical Reviews is all about. 

It is a sprightly up-to-date book covering 
selectively the literature of mathematics: 
greatest emphasis is put on pure or "core" 
mathematics without much dallying in the 
interdisciplinary swamp of applied mathe-
matics, except for brief chapterS on statistics 
and operations research, which are com-
paratively self-contained subjects. There is a 
definite bias toward American literature, 
especially the publications of the American 
Mathematics Society. Mathematics is ·one of 
the more international disciplines, and there 
is no mention of such important sources of 
papers as the French Seminaire publica-
tions. 

The book begins with a concise history of 
mathematics, followed by an informative 
chapter on the nature of mathematics and 
its literature. Mathematical activity · is di-
vided into three segments; research, appli-
cations, and exposition. While the needs of 
the mathematical researcher can be satisfied 

by access to a comparatively small amount 
of literature, applications-oriented mathe-
matics is widely dispersed through a variety 
of subjects and a diverse collection of jour-
nals and abstracts. 

The third segment, exposition, involves 
bringing together research from both pure 
and applied sources to arrive at consolida-
tions, simplifications, and relations within a 
general body of theory. According to 
Schaefer, this last area is the most neglected 
and difficult: mathematics is less susceptible 
to rapid review than the rest of the sciences 
due to its abstract nature, dependence on 
old as well as new literature, and specializa-
tion. 

The next area of discussion is information 
needs of mathematicians depending on the 
depth, currency, and focus of their interest. 
How the library and publishers organize lit-
erature to meet these needs is mentioned, 
along with the different forms this literature 
takes: journals, society publications, 
abstracts, monographi<;: series, and reference 
sources are included . The book ends with 
two brief chapters on applied subjects, 
statistics and operations research, where the 
literature is pretty well packaged. No men-
tion is made of the lack of a computer 
searchable data base for mathematics or the 
problems involved in this. 

This is all presented in a fresh, direct 
style. I have only a few specific gripes. 
First, there is no mention of handbooks 
such as the CRC mathematics handbooks: 
even with the advent of hand calculators 
some tables are still useful to mathemati-
cians. Second, for historical searches by au-
thor I find it useful to remember the se-
quence from Poggendorff; through the 
Royal Society Catalog, 1800-1900; the In-
ternational Catalog (math section) 1905-15; 
the ]ahrbuch uber die Fortschritter der 
Mathematik , 1864-1936; then the Zen-
tralblatt, beginning in 1931; and Mathemat-
ical Reviews, beginning in 1940. With this 
sequence you can access almost 200 years of 
mathematics literature. Third, there is too 
much concentration and explanation in 
Schaefer's book on the publications of the 
American Mathematics Society and not 
enough editorial comment on such things as 
the lack of a cumulated annual index for 
Statistical Theory and Method Abstracts. 



Altogether this is a useful and practical 
guide to mathematics literature. It would be 
most applicable to college libraries rather 
than large research collections in mathemat-
ics, where there would be more stress on 
foreign literature.-Alice W. Hall, Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, Cam-
bridge. 

Lewanski, Richard C., comp. Subject Col-
lections in European Libraries. 2d ed. 
New York: Bowker, 1978. 495p. $52.50. 
ISBN 0-85935-011-8. 

Roberts, Stephen; Cooper, Alan; and Gil-
der, Lesley, comps. Research Libraries 
and Collections in the United Kingdom: A 
Selective Inventory and Guide. London: 
Clive Bingley; Hamden, Conn.: Linnet 
Books, 1978. 285p. $25. LC 78-11560. 
ISBN 0-85157-258-8 Bingley; 0-208-
01667-8 Linnet. 
The two works of similar genre, by neces-

sity selective and geographically limited, are 
both designed }o aid the researcher and li-
brarian, but their philosophies are some-
what different, as an examination of the 
arrangement of the contents reveals. 

Lewanski believes in a strict subject ap-
proach as defined by the eighteenth edition 
of the Dewey Decimal Classification, which 
necessitates the repetition of information on 
libraries that may be strong in more than 
one subject. The author is himself aware of 
the shortcomings of the scheme for his pur-
pose, yet so stern is his commitment to this 
approach that he adds only one index-an 
alphabetical key to the classification scheme. 

The Roberts and others work, on the 
other hand, arranges the selection of UK li-
braries in alphabetic order in four groups: 
(1) national, specialist, and public libraries, 
(2) university libraries, (3) polytechnic 
libraries, (4) Scottish central institutions. Al-
though not mentioned in the table of con-
tents, some references to libraries in North-
ern Ireland are sprinkled among the first 
three categories. There are four indexes to 
this work: subject, name of collection, geo-
graphical, and list of libraries; the latter ar-
ranged in the same order as in the body of 
the text seems redundant. 

Both works try to give essential informa-
tion about the libraries, including address, 
name of librarian, date of foundation, size, 

Recent Publications I 391 

access, services rendered, hours, etc. 
(Roberts even lists phone and telex num-
bers.) This information, although unevenly 
supplied within each work, seems to be 
more detailed and exhaustive in Roberts. 
Both works list publications and guides de-
scribing the collections and libraries with 
each entry, the only difference being that 
more general guides are found in Lewanski 
after the subject entry while Roberts lists 
them in the beginning of the work (p.13-
18). 

Apart from the difficult task of obtaining, 
sorting, interpreting, and arranging massive 
materials, which the authors of both works 
had to face, Lewanski had to surmount in 
addition the problems of multilingual en-
tries with diacritical marks (which he omits 
throughout) and the uniform transliteration 
of non-Roman scripts. In general, he suc-
ceeds in this and even translates the Slavic, 
Finno-Ugric, Greek, Albanian, and Turkish 
names of libraries, albeit not always idiomat-
ically, which may in some instances be mis-
leading. There are other types of mista~es 
which are almost unavoidable in a large and 
complicated work as this. There are the 
usual misprints such as "Kunliga" for 
Kungliga (p.481b last entry), "Franois-
kanska" for Franciskanska (p.26 top), "Stata" 
for Stat (p.23a second entry from bottom). 
Pancevo is situated in Voivodina, not 
Slovenia as given (p.465a entry 4 from top). 
Apparently some misplacement occurred 
also in the subjects; at least the description 
of the collections would so indicate. Thus, 
for example, under 686 Printing-History 
and Technology for France, one finds the 
Vivarez collection of ex libris that is not ac-
counted for under 097 Book-Plates. 

The above imperfections notwithstanding, 
every well-stocked reference department 
will want to acquire both works. As 
Lewanski requests, the scholar and re-
searcher should continue to suggest im-
provements and make corrections so that 
the next edition will be exact and 
complete.-Miroslav Krek, Brandeis Uni-
versity, Waltham, Massachusetts. 

Wright, Kieth C. Library and Information 
Services for Handicapped Individuals. 
Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 
1979. 196p. $15 U.S. and Canada; $18