College and Research Libraries


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