College and Research Libraries


the references to actual research studies 
on the online catalog, the inclusion of 
more data would have been useful. In 
some controversial areas, Peters makes 
rather opinionated statements without 
providing balancing arguments, as in his 
condemnation (or is it the source's?) of 
the use of icons. In short, to make sub-
stantive use of the literature review, it 
would be necessary to return to the 
sources listed to understand their argu-
ments and intentions. 

One point, in particular, that is not 
well documented and that needs more 
discussion is Peters's statement, re-
peated in one way or another several 
times, that " ... online catalogs do not 
fulfill specific needs and ends. They are 
systems that were designed without spe-
cific needs and uses in mind." Part of his 
argument, and a theme throughout the 
book, is that designers of catalogs do not 
know from the outset all of the uses to 
which the catalog will be put and that the 
notion of the catalog is changing. It does 
not, however, necessarily follow that li-
brarians did not have any "specific needs 
and uses in mind" as they developed the 
catalog. 

Peters's discussion of remote access is 
well done. Certainly, this area deserves 
significant attention as librarians move 
into the future of network information 
use. Remote access use of libraries and 
library catalogs will have a significant 
impact on libraries and their traditional 
role. These potential effects are well 
identified. Because much of Peters's 
book builds to this discussion, and be-
cause the research effort explored relates 
to this topic as well, it might have been 
more explicitly identified in the title, 
purpose, and focus of the earlier parts of 
the book. Another useful part of this 
study is the summary of methods for 
examining public use of catalogs. Peters 
identifies the advantages and disadvan-
tages of these methods, transaction logs 
in particular, for getting at the use that 
actually is made of the catalog. He em-
phasizes the importance of considering 
the search session rather than individual 
search statements as the study element. 

With the tools available, then, Peters's 

Book Reviews 591 

study of remote access search sessions is 
limited to dial access in order to be able 
to identify a session with a discrete be-
ginning and end. Unfortunately, as Pe-
ters notes, this probably skews the 
results because of the nature of the pop-
ulation making use of the catalog by dial 
access. Peters looks at search type, zero-
hit rates, likely causes of problems, and 
temporal patterns of dial access use and 
relates these to findings of previous 
studies not limited to dial access. He also 
undertakes a description of the broader 
contents of those search sessions that in-
clude subject searches. Our knowledge of 
catalog use will be enhanced by the accu-
mulation of more studies of this type, 
particularly those that examine all re-
mote use, including that over local, cam-
pus- or universitywide, and national 
networks-presumably each used by 
quite different populations. 

In the final two chapters of the book, 
Peters helpfully summarizes his argu-
ments and addresses the future of librar-
ies and library catalogs as they are 
affected by technological and environ-
mental developments. Librarians with 
some familiarity with the literature on 
online catalogs and their public use will 
want to focus on these latter sections and 
the dial access transaction log study. Those 
librarians seeking more background on 
the literature might delve into the items 
listed in the bibliography.-Flo Wilson, 
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. 

Lillet, Remy. Pour une Europe du livre, 
rapport a secretaire d'Etat aux Relations 
culturelles internationales. Paris: La 
Documentation Fran~aise, 1990. 158p. 
FF75.00. (ISBN 2-11-002319-8). 
It is refreshing these days to read a 

book about business that concludes that 
the United States is more of a threat than 
Japan. The growing importance of English-
language publishing in Europe and U.S. 
dominance in electronic information 
causes French publisher Remy Lillet to 
reach just this conclusion. The French 
foreign ministry commissioned his book 
as part of its planning for the European 
single market, which, by the end of 1992, 
will remove all trade barriers between 



592 College & Research Libraries 

the twelve nations of the European Com-
munity (EC). That will make the Com-
munity the world's largest producer and 
consumer of books; the concentration of 
capital will allow European publishing 
and information companies to invest 
even more heavily in North America; 
and Western Europe will likely continue, 
for some time, to be the largest foreign 
supplier of books and journals to North 
American academic and research libraries. 

Lillet interviewed more than 300 peo-
ple connected with the book trade in the 
European Community and had access to 
several unpublished studies. His chap-
ters describing publishing and booksell-
ing in each of the twelve countries cover 
such topics as the structure of the pub-
lishing industry, foreign investment, 
edition size, distribution patterns, spe-
cialized publishing, and profiles of indi-
vidual publishers. They provide a useful 
update and supplement to the descrip-
tions in Peter Curwen' s The World Book 
Industry (1986). 

From the individual country accounts, 
Lillet puts together a picture of an industry 
increasingly driven by economic factors, 
but, as of yet, taking little advantage of the 
opportunities the single market offers. Al-
though some publishers, mostly in Britain, 
the Netherlands, and Germany, have be-
come part of the international information 
industry, most of European publishing is 
fragmented by language and national 
tradition. The gap is widening between 
the very large publishing houses, which 
can attract capital from outside the book 
world, and the middle-sized and small 
publishers. With outside capital comes 
still more growth through economies of 
scale and investment in publicity and 
technology. 

This development is true all over the 
world, of course, but in Europe a signif-
icant gap exists between the north and 
the south, with the north having larger 
reader populations, more large publish-
ers, and better book distribution systems. 
The situation is improving in some south-
em countries, notably Italy and Spain, and 
there are some signs of stagnation in the 
north, but the gap has not narrowed ap-
preciably. Publishing throughout Western 

November1991 

Europe is threatened by the spread of 
English and by the new electronic media 
for information (computers and ma-
chine-readable databases) and leisure 
(the Walkman and the new importance 
in Europe of television, as cable and sat-
ellite systems become more common). 

Takeovers and mergers are frequent 
occurrences in European publishing 
today, both between houses in the same 
country and across national lines. Spain, 
with its growing economy and access to 
the overseas Spanish-language market, 
has been a particular target for French 
and Italian firms, and Britain, with its 
access to the worldwide English-language 
market, has attracted investors from the 
other EC countries and from the United 
States. Capital-rich companies in other 
areas of industry have bought into the 
information business and the leisure busi-
ness, acquiring publishers as sources of 
data and of plots that can be used in other 
media. Publishers themselves have at-
tempted to diversify by acquiring other 
media companies and by acquiring con-
trol of part of the distribution process. 
Bookstore chains, some owned by pub-
lishers, are becoming increasingly com-
mon all over Europe. 

Despite the activity of some publish-
ers, Lillet fears that the competition from 
other media, the lack of capital in many 
parts of the book trade, and the reluc-
tance of many publishers and booksell-
ers to accept the new technology and the 
changed economic circumstances will 
cause stagnation or a downturn in the 
European book trade. His solution for 
this is greater cooperation among the 
publishers of the European Community. 
He proposes a more forceful European 
publishers' association (which has since 
come about), a booksellers' association, 
regular conferences of major figures in 
the industry, a clearinghouse for interna-
tional projects, and a program of interna-
tional education for those planning 
careers in the book trade. 

Lillet also hopes the Community will 
adopt an interventionist policy to help 
the book trade by establishing retail 
price maintenance throughout the Com-
munity, sharply reducing or eliminating 



value-added taxes on books, subsidizing 
postal rates, establishing policies on 
copyright and photocopying, and im-
proving the level of support for libraries. 
Unfortunately, Lillet presents these last 
proposals with enthusiasm, but without 
debate. For example, most bookstore 
chains, some publishers, and many con-
sumers oppose retail price maintenance. 

Both the strengths and the weaknesses 
of this book lie in the characterization of 
the individual countries and the use of 
data from interviews. The information is 
current and informed. Lillet has a knack 
for choosing facts and anecdotes that en-
liven and clarify his account, but in rely-
ing on interviews and pointing out the 
peculiarities of each country, he loses 
comparability. We are given one type of 
information about Italy and quite an-
other about Denmark. The introductory 
and concluding sections bring out the 
economic factors that are now the most 
important forces shaping the Community's 
book trade, but ignore other interesting 
themes that are raised in the chapters on 
specific countries. Why, for example, is 
the rate of readership rising in Italy, but 
stable or declining in most other coun-
tries? Still, readers wanting an overview 
of the book trade in any of the twelve EC 
countries, those wanting information on 
the economic state of the European book 
trade as it moves toward 1992, and his-
torians of the book will all find much to 
admire in Pour une Europe du livre.-
James Campbell, University of Virginia, 
Charlottesville. 

Bibliographic Access in Europe: First In-
ternational Conference. The Proceed-
ings of a Conference Organized by the 
Centre for Bibliographic Management 
and Held at the University of Bath 
14-17 September 1989. Ed. by Lorcan 
Dempsey. Aldershot, Hants., England: 
Gower, 1990. 315p. $69.95 (ISBN 0-
566-03644-4). 
The First International Conference on 

Bibliographic Access in Europe was a 
successor to three conferences on online 
public access to library files held at Bath 
from 1984 through 1987. Delegates were 
present from twenty-eight countries, 

Book Reviews 593 

and speakers came from throughout Eu-
rope and beyond. 

This volume is a collection of thirty 
papers from the 1989 conference, at 
which the OPAC theme was expanded to 
include a much wider variety of issues 
concerning access to bibliographic mate-
rials. The papers describe both achieve-
ments and future plans and prospects, 
ranging from individual innovative cat-
aloging projects to attempts at international 
cooperation. They are grouped into thecate-
gories ''Interactive Local Systems," ''Net-
worksandNetworking," "Central Databases," 
"Central Databases-CO-ROM," ''Biblio-
graphic Records: Innovations," and ''Biblio-
graphic Standards." 

In his keynote address, "Towards a 
Golden Age?" Michael Smethurst, presi-
dent of the Ligue des Bibliotheques 
Europeennes de Recherche, juxtaposes the 
ideals of a common European meta catalog 
(all records from all libraries convertefi 
into machine-readable form) with the re-
alities of meeting the needs of individual 
users in countries lacking a common lan-
guage and in diverse libraries decentral-
ized politically, administratively, and 
financially. The emphasis, he says, should 
be on "providing access to machine-read-
able catalogs in whatever formats and 
with whatever standards exist." 

Some of the most interesting contribu-
tions are those describing cooperative 
projects that reach across borders. Exist-
ing cooperative efforts are introduced in 
such chapters as "The European Cooper-
ative CD-ROM Project" by Barbara 
Buckley (National Bibliographic Service, 
the British Library), and the OCLC con-
tribution, "Issues and Considerations in 
Creating an International Database," by 
Janet Mitchell (OCLC International) . Ar-
ticles presenting guidelines or frame-
works for cooperation developed by 
European bodies include "The Plan of 
Action for Libraries in the European 
Community: New Partnerships," by Ari-
ane Iljon (Commission of the European 
Communities) and Pat Manson (lnfotap, 
Luxembourg), "EUROLIB-Towards a 
European Library?" by Harold Dierickx 
(Library Liaison Division, European 
Parliament, Luxembourg), and "Retro-