College and Research Libraries 604 I College & Research Libraries· November 1981 is a work which could be classified as eco- nomics. A particularly unsatisfactory sec- tion, to this reviewer, is "Description and Travel." One would like to have known more about the basis on which the selection was made. It would appear that their promo- tional character was a determining factor as in thecaseofJohnDrayton'sA View of South Carolina as Respects Her Natural and Civil Concerns, 1802. One wonders, then, at the omission of John Filson's The Discovery Set- tlement and Present State of Kentucke, 1784. The subject clearly needs further defini- tion. One of the functions of the collector and the bibliographer is to help define a field through assembling and organizing the liter- ature of a subject. In this respect, Rink has made a notable contribution. His extensive treatment of both federal and state laws bear- ing on technological matters is one of the most valuable parts of the work. The large number of subheadings, seventy-five, may at first glance seem excessive, particularly when one notes that "General Works on Civil Engi- neering" has 3 items while "Canals" has 816. What this reveals is the difficulty of combin- ing an ancient concept, canals, with a com- paratively modern one, civil engineering. By dividing the subject into so many different parts we are shown what a difficult one it is to manage. Drugs as they apply to medicine are omitted, yet fertilizer as it applies to agricul- ture is included. What we have in Rink's work is an important step forward in the defi- nition and organization of a body of litera- ture that has not been tackled on this scale before. That it has weaknesses is to be ex- pected, but it provides a point of departure which can be built upon with confidence.- Thomas R. Adams, John Carter Brown Li- brary, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Volume IV: The Great Change, 1940-1980. New York & Lon- don: Bowker, 1981. 830p. $37.50. LC 71- 163903. ISBN 0-8352-0499-5. On page 113 of this massive compendium of miscellaneous information on book pub- lishing in the United States over the past forty years, the author tells a poignant story of Doubleday's valiant attempt to publish Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe with no mistakes, only to find on publication a glar- ing error in the very first sentence. Reading through the next 600 pages of Tebbel's his- tory, this story keeps coming to mind as facts familiar to the reader are misrepresented in the book. Few of the mistakes seem conse- quential, e. g., Hammond's Map Store is now located at 12 East 41st Street, not One East 43rd Street, New York (p.557); David Go- dine studied with Ray Nash while at Dart- mouth, not after graduation (p.421); the fa- mous Ulysses decision was in the thirties, not the sixties (p.695); the Peter Pauper Press (p.419) has yet to be reinstalled as a working laboratory press at SUNY Purchase, but they do undermine the user's confidence in the ac- curacy of Tebbel's accounts of the unfamil- iar. The vast bulk of the work (perhaps three- quarters) is devoted to capsule histories of hundreds of publishing firms in the United States with greatest length devoted to the great firms, the corporate giants, the people who molded their success~ and the internal corporate struggles which eventually deter- mined their ownership and direction. Em- phasis is given to the best-selling titles, if not the significant ones. The coverage is uneven, with little discrimination in choice of facts presented, but these histories often made di- verting reading with their personal slant on the academic pedigree and idiosyncrasies of the principals and even the names of restau- rants and clubs where significant publishing deals were consummated over lunch. While virtually all of the information pre- sented in the book is of interest to librarian and general reader alike, The Great Change is less a history than a collection of raw mate- rials toward a history of book publishing in mid-twentieth-century America, with a nat- ural emphasis on New York City. Tebbel has relied too heavily upon the ver- tical files of Bowker and the pages of Pub- lishers Weekly for this period to provide an adequate synthesis or to relate the course of publishing to the political, aesthetic, intellec- tual, or social trends of the period. The net has not been cast widely enough, many leads have not been pursued, and much should have been culled. In truth, the limited sources used could hardly have produced a synthesis-writing a history of book publish- ing from Publishers Weekly is rather like - ~t}.-rv E QUESTIONED LIBRARIANS WORLD-WIDE. ~~~HERE'S WHAT THEY TOLD US: • "This is one of our most helpful bibliographic tools. It makes my job so much easier. ... Our patrons find it easy to use and containing adequate references to articles valuable in their research . I don 't know how we managed without it.'' We've tried to make your job easier. Now the vast resources of govemment periodicals can readily be used by researchers and students, requiring less of your time helping them locate material. e "Index to U.S. Government Periodicals has significantly increased the use of our gov- ernment periodicals and is our most important reference tool for government documents." Without Index to U.S. Govemment Periodicals use of these materials would be expensive and time consuming . Using many separate indexes simply isn't cost effective. Without this tool much of the information in these periodicals would be lost. • "What you choose to index has a direct bearing on which government periodicals our library chooses." Source material is only as valuable as its accessi- bility. Add this index to your collection to provide answers to the entire range of reference questions. • "We have found the Index very useful in providing access to many periodicals not indexed elsewhere." Many titles are covered exclusively by Index to U.S. Govemment Periodicals. Plus coverage of titles included in over fifty other indexes. One standard for selection of new titles is lack of indexing by other services. • "Too often, it seems to me, is your Index to U.S. Government Periodicals sequestered away in the Documents Department. As a general periodical index, it merits a disposi- tion next to PAIS, Readers' Guide, etc. We are now locating it next to Monthly Catalog to facilitate greater use." Index to U.S. Govemment Periodicals certainly has value beyond the bounds of the Documents Department. Those in general research will find it a valuable source for material not found in other standard guides. If after reading these remarl