College and Research Libraries is that no one understands very well what happens from the time someone thinks of act- ing to when the results of these labors merge as books, lectures, or papers. The second problem is a more obvious one: even after a scheme for development (a "policy") is con- cocted, the items available for selection must be matched up with it. This is not intended as a justification for ignorance, but simply as a reminder that the most successful results are likely to be obtained by those whose claims to methodological sophistication are modest. What then are the strengths and weak- nesses of the present collection of essays? Those entering collection development who have the background judgment to make an eventual success of it will find the descriptive of this essays collection a helpful orientation to present practice. Experienced collection development officers, on the other hand, will probably get more out of articles on method- ology. The articles on citation analysis in the social and natural sciences and technology by Shirley A. Fitzgibbons and Kris Subranan- yan represent, for example, one approach to dealing with the troublesome problem of journal selection, and William E. McGrath's interesting article (following from his earlier work) has sensible things to say about using circulation analysis in collection develop- ment. Paul H. Mosher provides two excellent essays o:t:t the problems with evaluating large collections and identifying candidates for dis- card, storage, and preservation. The strength of the foregoing articles is that they offer practical ways of determining what is used in and the strengths and weaknesses of the col- lections. The weaknesses of the collection lie in the descriptive (as opposed to the methodological or analytic) articles. In the matter of money allocation, for example, one essay notes: "There are four basic approaches: the historical/political, the planned, the flexible response, and the organizational." The elab- oration of these categories, unfortunately, provides little more in the way of specific guidance than the titles of the categories themselves. Too many of the papers share this lack of concreteness, which could perhaps have been remedied with illustrative exam- ples. In contrast, the useful essays by Carl W. Deal and Erwin Welsch (the latter is always worth reading) set out the problems of Latin Recent Publications I 597 American and European acquisitions and of- fer specific advice (with names, titles, and the rest) on how to solve them. The collection as a whole, then, is a mixed bag, as such things usually are, and reflects many of the ambiguities within collection de- velopment itself. It is hardly exciting stuff, but it has enough merit tp repay its perusal.- John G. Williamson, St. Mary's College of Maryland Library, St. Mary's City, Mary- land. Rowley, J. E. Computersfor Libraries. Out- lines of Modern Librarianship Series. New York and London: K.G. Saur/Clive Bingley, 1980. 159p. $12. ISBN 0-85157- 298-7. (Distributed in U.S. by the Shoe String Press, Inc.) Smith, David. Systems Thinking in Library and lnfonnation Management. New York and London: K.G. Saur/Clive Bingley, 1980. 142p. $16. ISBN 0-85157-333-9. (Distributed in U.S. by The Shoe String Press, Inc.) These two books from the same publisher address entirely different readers. Com- puters for Libraries is intended as a survey course on library computer systems for "non- computer literate" librarians. Systems Thinking in Libraries and Information Man- agement is an attempt to bring the body of knowledge called "systems theory" to bear on library problems. The author claims that this book is not for experts yet it is clearly far from a beginning text for anyone interested in li- brary automation or library management. Computers for Libraries spends a few chapters trying to acquaint the reader with some of the vocabulary of computers and computing. This is an extremely important foundation-laying activity but it falls some- what short of its objective. Partly due to the author's style and organization of the presen- tation and partly to aspects of typography (poorly laid out diagrams, no use of boldface or italics, etc.) it will not always be clear to the novice reader what terms or concepts are being defined and how important they are. Some of the recognized standard texts on li- braries and computing that the author refers to do a better job of laying a solid base of understanding. The second half of the book presents a good survey of the ways that 'computers and 598 I College & Research Libraries· November 1981 computer-based services are being used in li- braries. The author mixes generic explana- tion of activities such as database searching with practical examples to give the reader an up-to-date picture of library computing. In this respect, the text is a good companion to some of the earlier works on the same subject. The author occasionally creates an impres- sion that the possibilities for automation in a particular area are completely defined by his examples and his description of current prac- tice. As hardware changes and software im- proves, many library automated systems will certainly change character dramatically. Systems Thinking attempts to help library managers by delving into the systems theory and systems-modeling world and searching out means of using the methodologies of these disciplines. The author attempts to build a foundation of concepts and then proceeds to relate them to library problems. Unfortunately the book is an extremely dif- ficult text to read. The author's style obscures what he is trying to achieve. Thete is room within librarianship for a certain amount of "purely theoretical" discussion as long as the objective is the eventual enhancement of practical activity. I think that the author un- derstands this and intended to add to our ability to view library decision making within a theoretical context. However, this reader found that the writing style, the use of jargon, and the organization of the text com- bined to create an almost impenetrable treatise.-Peter G. Lipman, Brown Univer- sity, Providence, Rhode Island. Maranjian, Lorig, and Boss, Richard W. Fee- based Information Services; A Study of a Growing Industry. Information Manage- ment Series/!. New York and London: R. R. Bowker Co., 1980. 199p. This is a clear, factual description of cur- rent services offered in the United States and Canada by commercial and free-lance firms that gather data and organize or analyze them for a fee, using the methods of tradi- tionallibrarianship supplemented with tech- niques such as online literature searching and telephone interviewing. Maranjian, at the time the book was written, was a research assistant with Information Systems Consul- tants, Inc., of Bethesda, Maryland, and Bos- ton; she is now administrative assistant with Creative Strategies International of London, England. Boss is senior consultant with ISCI and is well know as a writer and speaker on library automation and kindred subjects. The study is based mainly on the answers received on questionnaires filled out by 105 proprietors of information services. The au- thors have reported on answers from seven types of services: (1) large firms (with more than twenty-five employees), (2) medium- sized companies, (3) small companies (fewer than five employees, according to a state- ment on p.3; fewer than six, according to an- other on p.20, (4) free-lancers, (5) services in not-for-profit organizations such as libraries and professional societies, (6) Canadian ser- vices (the reason for the separate treatment of this group is not given), and (7) services mainly intended to serve units of the firms of which they are parts. The forty-two-item questionnaire asked for a wide variety of information about each organization surveyed. Topics included kinds of services offered, kinds of resources used (databases, collections of nearby li- braries, etc.), size and background of staff, marketing practices, pricing policy, amount of business, and capitalization. Respondents were also asked to predict the future of their firms and of information brokering in gen- eral. Several descriptions or "profiles" of indi- vidual firms of various types help the reader to understand how this industry operates. The first firm treated in this way, FIND/ SVP, which is fascinating but not at all typi- cal, has revenues exceeding three million dol- lars a year. It is affiliated with an even larger Parisian firm, SVP (Sil Vous Plait), and an entire family of firms throughout the world. In other sections, the authors speculate on the future of this branch of the information industry, discuss relations with libraries, and briefly describe the state of the industry in the United Kingdom. Special features include a brief list of sources of help for small businesses and a group of reproductions of advertisements used by some firms. One feature is surely not very helpful to adult readers: several chapters are followed by brief, simple questions and answers about the text which are reminiscent of those in junior high school books. The information in the book will be partie-