College and Research Libraries


294 College & Research Libraries 

discovery and constructive dialogue 
within the library and information com-
munities that was characteristic of the con-
ference itself." They succeeded most 
admirably.-LeMoyne W. Anderson, Colo-
rado State University. 

Lancaster, F. W. Libraries and Librarians in 
an Age of Electronics. Arlington, Va.: IRP, 
1982. 229p. LC 82-081403. ISBN 0-
87815-040-4. 
''The book is laden . . . with all the de-

fects of a first attempt, incomplete, and 
certainly not free from inconsistencies. 
Nevertheless I am convinced that it con-
tains the incontrovertible formulation of 
an idea which, once enunciated clearly, 
will ... be accepted without dispute." 
Thus does Oswald Spengler introduce The 
Decline of the West, which rests on the the-
sis that creative intellect is dead and that 
Spengler is the last philosopher whose 

· task is to ''sketch out this unphilosophical 
philosophy-the last that West Europe 
will know" (The Decline of the West, New 
York, Knopf, 1926, p.46-50). 

Lancaster's book is not a first attempt. In 
stitching together several previously pub-
lished papers, it comes dangerously close 
to being a textbookish cut-and-paste bib-
liographic review on the topic, ''The De-
cline of the Library-maybe for sure." 

The author hopes the book "will stimu-
late members of the library profession to 
reassess the role of the librarian as an in-
formation specialist in a time of extensive 
social and technological change" (p.vii). 
Not likely. Like Cassandra, Lancaster's 
curse may be in being right, but un-
heeded. If Cassandra had had a word 
processor and graduate students to help 
her would Troy have declined faster or 
slower? There is also the possibility that 
Lancaster does not have Apollo's gift of 
prophecy and is just plain wrong or mis-
reading the data. 

There is, for example, the statement that 
''development of ADONIS (Article Deliv-
ery over Network Information Systems) 
has been stimulated by the finding that 
photocopy requests made to the British Li-
brary Lending Division are dominated by 
requests for articles issued by commercial 
publishers and that 80% of all requests are 

July 1983 

for articles 5 years old or less" (p.75). The 
source of this misinformation is not pro-
vided, but one need only think of the age 
spread of books circulated by libraries or 
lSI's citation data by date to get a different 
picture. Or, check the record. (A. Clarke, 
"The Use of Serials at the British Library 
Lending Division in 1980," Interlending 
Review 9: 111-171981.) There may be a pa-
perless society and possibly even a project 
ADONIS in our near future, but not if a 
short information half-life is the critical 
factor. 

Lancaster, finally looking back on more 
than 300 citations, years of thinking and 
teaching about librarians' electronic fate, 
consulting for the CIA, and massive expo-
sure to the hard radiations of the Univer-
sity of Illinois Library administration, can 
only ask at the end of his unphilosophical 
philosophy, ''Will the paperless society be 
in place by the end of the century? It seems 
highly likely that it will. But only time will 
tell" (p.206). This reviewer cannot recom-
mend the work as being either particularly 
conclusive or stimulating as the basis for 
either that question or its answer.-Larry 
X. Besant, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, 
Missouri. 

McGarry, Kevin J. The Changing Context of 
Information: An Introductory Analysis. 
Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String, 1982. 
189p. $19.50. ISBN 0-85157-325-8. 
Intended as a textbook in the founda-

tions of information work, K. J. McGarry's 
survey is a ramble through the concepts 
and history of library and information sci-
ence. McGarry has chosen a conversa-
tional style, presumably to make the mate-
rial more accessible to a generation raised 
in the aural tradition. Loosely connected 
clauses, eccentric punctuation, and fre-
quent changes of tense, number, and per-
son give the work the informal tone often 
found in transcriptions of taped inter-
views. While McGarry's devices of casual 
discourse may ease the way for the mod-
ern student, they are obstacles for the old-
fashioned reader of library literature who 
expects and prefers expository prose. 

The word deals with four aspects of in-
formation science: epistemology, the his-
tory of writing and printing, scholarly