College and Research Libraries


178 I College & Research Libraries • March 1980 

iniscent of the worst excesses of our odd-
shaped high: school libraries in the 1960s . 
But in this case the twist is even more per-
verse, since they have converted a square-
floor-plan building into twin triangles on 
each floor. 

To be highly commended is the British 
tendency in the polytechnic universities to 
mount their library science school quarters 
on the top floor of the library, which is used 
aggressively as a workshop-teaching facility 
for library science students, a bedrock-
sound practice that has long been aban-
doned by American schools of librarian-
ship.-Ellsworth Mason , University of 
Colorado at Boulder. 

Microforms Management in Special Librar-
ies: A Reackr. Edited by Judy H. Fair. 
Microform Review Series in Library Mi-
crographics Management, 5. Westport , 
Conn.: Microform Review, 1979. 272p. 
$21.95 . LC 78-13494 . ISBN 0-913672-
15-7. 
This reader is a heterogeneous collection 

of thirty-one essays from a wide variety of 
periodicals and monographs published be-
tween 1966 and 1978 in the United States, 
Australia , and Great Britain . The authors 
are associated with law, music , map , busi-
ness , hospital, local history, education, sci-
ence, and engineering libraries. There are 
articles on equipment, user attitudes , and 
computer output microforms applications. 

The essays are organized into five sec-
tions, each with a short introduction and a 
bibliography compiled by the editor. Collec-
tively, these and other bibliographies in this 
volume could serve as basis for a historical 
reading list on microforms and some special 
applications. Some of the essays are infor-
mative and up to date; others on specialized 
resources, equipment, and procedures are 
dated. Information contained in essays on 
the general topics of microforms in libraries 
is repetitive. Although the book and all sec-
tion titles contain the word management, it 
is neither a central nor unifying theme. 

In the foreword , the editor states that the 
search for articles for inclusion in this vol-
ume revealed a scarcity of writing on the 
principles of microform use in special librar-
ies , but she hopes that one or more of the 
pieces will provide the inspiration for more 

communication on microforms. The book 
lives up to that hope and promise.-Leo R. 
Rift, Ithaca College , Ithaca , New York . 

The Map Librarian in the Modern World. 
Essays in Honour of Walter W. Ristow. 
Edited by Helen Wallis and Lothar 
Zogner. Presented by the IFLA Section 
of Geography and Map Libraries. 
Munich, New York: K. G. Saur, 1979. 
295p. $26. ISBN 3-598-10063-9. 
This festschrift was compiled to honor 

Walter W. Ristow upon his retirement as 
chief, Geography & Map Division, Library 
of Congress . As with most festschriften, this 
is a mixed bag. 

Four LC staff members give a brief his-
tory of the Library of Congress Geography 
& Map Division from 1897; Helen Wallis of 
the British Library tells of map librar-
ianship' s coming of age; Lothar Zogner of 
the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulter-
besitz discusses the training of map librar-
ians ; Roman Drazniowsky, curator of the 
AGS collections , describes the American 
Geographical Society collections now at the 
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; David 
Woodward of the Newberry Library de-
scribes the He-rman Dunlap Smith Center 
for the History . of Cartography ; Joan 
Winearls of the University of Toronto de-
scribes map collections and map librar-
ianship in Canada; Ib Kejlbo of the Royal 
Danish Library describes map libraries in 
Denmark ; Edmond Pognon of the Bib-
liotheque Nationale describes its map de-
partment; Anna Kozlowa of the Lenin Li-
brary describes the map collection in that 
institution; the late Ann-Mari Mickwitz 
writes of the N ordenskiold Collection in the 
University of Helsinki; Antoine De Smet of 
the Albert I Royal Library in Brussels dis-
cusses the sixteenth-century cartophile 
Viglius ab Aytta; Hans van de Waal of the 
Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht describes the 
Dutch union map catalog; and Emil 
Meynen discusses the cataloging of thematic 
maps. 

Walter Ristow's forty-year career as a map 
librarian has witnessed the rise and matura-
tion of the map library profession, and he 
has helped to shape and direct this growth. 
In a brief preface, Daniel Boorstin, Librar-
ian of Congress, calls Ristow a " scholar-