College and Research Libraries 76 I College & Research Libraries • January 1981 work a pleasure to use. It will be especially valuable for all Catholic institutions, but it is recommended also for large academic and public libraries and for those having special collections in theology.-Lucille Whalen , State University of New York at Albany. Morse, Grant W. Guide to the Incompar- able New York Times Index. New York: Fleet , 1980. 72p . $11. 95 ; $6.95 paper. LC 79-87815. ISBN 0-8303-0159-3. Morse has somehow managed to convince himself (and a publisher) that the New York Times Index is so enigmatic and abstruse that his personal intervention was warranted in the form of this slim volume. " Incompar- able " qualities notwithstanding, he admon- ishes those who ". . . naively insist that any intelligent person is capable of compre- hending the Index without a guide. " The fact that the NYTI , like many other refer- ence sources , harbors a few unique ele- ments and approaches by no means justifies Morse's well-intentioned contribution. The Guide to the Incomparable New York Times Index seems to have been prepared under the assumption that the user is mild- ANY FOREIGN MICROFORM AT THE FOREIGN LIST PRICE • Firm dollar prices • No customs problems • Free searches Phone orders accepted International Microform Distribution Service Clearwater Publishing Company, Inc. 1995-L Broadway New York, NY 10023 (212) 873-2100 ly retarded yet simultaneously delivers page after page of extremely tedious information on subject headings , cross-references , and entries. One wonders who constitutes Morse's primary audience. He immodestly and ungrammatically announces that "Here- in one will find what you always wanted to know about the New York Times Index, but never dared ask." Though Morse does answer many questions that none would dream of posing, he does provide several practical observations, e. g., the NYTI serves as index and abstract, it can often be used as a fairly accurate guide to major stories in other newspapers, and that librarians should save the daily news summaries until the In- dex itself arrives. Certainly he seems hard- pressed to carry on for seventy-two pages; an appendix section, for example, contains full-page photographs of the Index, of an anonymous hand removing microfilm from a cabinet , of someone removing reel from box, and of someone consulting film on a reader. Furthermore, the book is strangely arranged ; there is no logical sequence or progression . Perhaps the most useful sec- tion is the one entitled " Miscellaneous In- formation. " Morse 's prose style is, to say the least, most unusual. Rarely has this reviewer seen anything like it committed to print. Two typical examples: The reputation of the Times shines perhaps the brightest in that within its pages are found a large number of source documents in full or in substan- tial excerpts, and thus it came to be regarded as "The newspaper of record. " Throughout the years The New York Times has maintained a status unequaled in the history of periodical publishing in the length of time of its continuous publication, the comprehensiveness of its coverage, and the quality of its authoritative- ness . It is beyond question the outstanding re- source for general reference and serials divisions of libraries worldwide. There is no need to belabor the obvious. The Guide to the Incomparable New York Times Index is simply not a worthwhile ref- erence acquisition. For the most part, Morse has made much ado about not much at all. In order to preserve the reputation of both author and publisher, the Guide, like a faulty automobile, should be recalled if in fact it has already been released.-Mark R . Yerburgh, State University of New York at Albany . Pseudonyms and Nicknames Dictionary. First edition. Edited by Jennifer Moss- man. Detroit: Gale, 1980. 627p. $48. LC 80-13274. ISBN 0-8103-0549-6. The Pseudonyms and Nicknames Dictio- nary (PND) will not replace any works a li- brary already has on pseudonyms and nick- names but it will supplement them. Its scope is revealed in a subtitle worthy of a nineteenth-century novel, " A Guiae to Pseudonyms, Pen Names, Nicknames, Epithets, Stage Names, Cognomens , Alias- es , and Sobriquets of Twentieth-Century Persons, including the Subjects' Real Names, Basic Biographical Information, and Citations for the Sources from Which the Entries Were Compiled. " It is thus limited to "figures who have achieved some degree of prominence or recognition" who were alive during some part of the twentieth cen- tury , with emphasis on North Americans and Western Europeans. It includes more than 17,000 real names and almost 22,000 assumed ones, with authors accounting for only 40 percent of the names . The PND was compiled by consulting more than eighty biographical dictionaries and through contacts with specialists in fields such as auto racing and rodeos . A use- ful feature is an indication by the real name of the source or sources used to obtain the information . In addition to providing a source of verification , this serves as a start- ing point for further investigation. When no source is listed, the information was obtained through independent editorial re- search. Since most libraries hold a number of pseudonym and nickname dictionaries already , it is important to know how the PND compares with them. I selected Harold Sharp's Handbook of Pseudonyms and Personal Nicknames (Scarecrow, 1972) and Supplement (1975), Frank Atkinson ' s Dictionary of Pseudonyms and Pen Names (Linett Books , 1975), Samuel Halkett and John Laing's Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature (Oliver and Boyd, v.8, 1956, and v.9, 1962), and Laurence Urdang's Twentieth Century American Nicknames (Wilson, 1979) for Recent Publications I 11 comparison. Taking a page of the PND with forty-seven names, I found twenty-eight not listed in Sharp. Of the twenty English or American authors on the page, nineteen were not listed in Halkett and nine were not in Atkinson. Six of the eleven twen- tieth-century personal nicknames were not in U rdang. Covering the same alphabetical range, Sharp had six twentieth-century names not in PND , Halkett seven, Atkinson three , and Urdang five . PND is thus not comprehensive but it does add significantly to any pseudonym and nickname collection. From recent ads it appears that the PND will be supplemented in usual Gale fashion by New Pseudonyms and Nicknames, thus increasing its usefulness especially for cur- rent figures. Given its restriction to twentieth-century figures, one suprising area in which I found some lacks was what might be described as popular culture. PND had no listings for Miss Vicky (Mrs. Herbert "Tiny Tim" Buck- ingham Khaury), Cheech (Richard Marin) , or Evel Knievel (Robert Craig Knievel) . PND is , however, strong in sports . Another problem is that an asterisk is used to indi- cate a pseudonym, but that is not explained anywhere . It would also be useful, in the case of authors , to distinguish between pen names and nicknames.-Carol M . Tobin , Princeton University, Princeton , New jersey. Brown, Clara D . , and Smith, Lynn S. Se- rials: Past, Present and Future. 2d rev. ed. Birmingham , Ala. : EBSCO Indus- tries, Inc., 1980. 390p. $20. LC 80- 81267. ISBN 0-913956-05-8. Despite the somewhat misleading title, Serials: Past, Present and Future is in- tended as a handbook for new serials librar- ians and a reference tool for experienced ones and deals primarily with the specifics of serials management. It is an enlarged and revised edition of Clara Brown's Serials: Ac- quisition and Maintenance , published in paper in 1972 . The first edition contains solid information on such matters as who to order serials from , how to know when to claim, and what to do with duplicate issues and reflects the author's long experience in the field and her familiarity with all types of serials problems. This new edition builds on