College and Research Libraries Book Reviews Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues. Ed. by Marcia Tuttle. Electronic mail address to subscribe, submit, or request back issues: TUTfLE@UNC.bitnet. U.S. mail address: Serials Department, Davis Library, Uni- versityofNorth Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. No.1- . February 25, 1989- . Subscription price: free. Note: Access cost may be involved at the subscriber's end depending on type of network access and charging mechanisms for connect time (ISSN: 1046-3410). My enthusiasm for early electronic networked serials does not stem from their meeting the same standards as print- on-paper publications, standards that have evolved over 500 years. (Standards have yet to evolve for e-publications.) Nor is the proper question, would librar- ies acquire an e-journal if they had to pay in hard currency? (We might not for a number of reasons, such as not knowing quite what to do with such publications.) One has to be excited by electronic seri- als because they are small steps at tap- ping the potential of an awesome medium. One has to be thankful for them and their editors, for they have, almost without our realizing it, inveigled us into the basic techniques of navigating e- world, and we have had fun learning how. The Newsletter on Serial Pricing Issues (NSPI) falls somewhere in the middle- range of formality of the electronic seri- als currently distributed on the "Net." That is, it is not a discussion list, where postings are received from list members and redistributed; it is not a journal with an editor who receives, edits, possibly submits for peer review, and distributes long scholarly or discursive articles. The NSPI has a theme: serial prices; it has a mission: to deliver late-breaking news and opinions quickly to subscribers; it has a philosophy: to be impartial. This philosophy of impartiality means that when the editor sees or is offered material that is in scope, responsibly written, and interesting to subscribers, that material (letters, news items, ex- tracts from published materials) is in- cluded. Originator and philosophical stances do not determine inclusion. The Newsletter originally began under sponsorship of the ALA/RTSD (later ALCTS) Publisher /Vendor-Library Re- lations Committee, which created a sub- committee on serials pricing issues, one of whose mandates was to act as a clearinghouse, gathering and dissemi- nating pricing information. Marcia Tuttle, subcommittee chair, envisioned the electronic NSPI, and the other sub- committee members became the first editorial board. After the subcommittee was disbanded two years later (May 1991), Tuttle continued the Newsletter as her own, and established a new editorial board. All along, the Newsletter has borne the stamp of the editor. The board's in- fluence has been largely transparent. Originally the Newsletter was slated to appear first electronically, with a paper counterpart following every two months. By October of 1989, less than a year after start-up, ALA recognized the need for some cost recovery and an- nounced a fee for retrospective paper copies, effective January 1990. In issue #15, January 27, 1990, an editorial an- nounced that paper would no longer be produced. This was a perfectly sensible decision, given the commitment to pub- lish quickly and inexpensively as the highest priority. Such a sequence may eventually prove to be the model for a number of journals that begin in parallel formats and quickly find the costs of dual (paper and electronic) output too high to sustain and drop the paper ver- sion or charge for it. In electronic pub- lishing it is, after all, possible to move the paper production efforts and costs onto the subscribers rather than onto the edi- tors and publishers. At this writing, Tuttle has produced fifty-one NSPI issues in under three years, or 1 2/3 issues per month. Their appearance has been regularly irregular. Presumably when there is enough mate- rial or there is late-breaking news, an issue is keyed and distributed to those on the subscription list. This is the model that all electronic lists and conferences, as well as some e-journals, follow. While the Newsletter has not changed a great deal since its start-up, technical issues have been resolved; the software has im- proved, and editor and subscribers have become much more e-proficient. No longer is it necessary to run pieces in the Newsletter describing how to download or access it-a critical mass of academic readers is fluent in e-reading. With issue #2, a table of contents ap- peared, along with a column, "From the Editor." The column usually informs readers about some characteristic of NSPI rather than stating an opinion or point of view on issues. Editorial neutrality presumably encourages diverse types of contributors (such as publishers). Also with issue #5, Chuck Hamaker of LSU began writing the column, "Hamaker's Haymakers," which has been the most consistent fea- ture of the Newsletter in providing refer- ences to useful reading rna tter, in interpreting events, and in speaking for the intelligent, conscientious consumer. Hamaker's voice is sometimes strident; often highly opinionated; frequently controversial; and always articulate, provocative, and service-oriented. The column provides a welcome counter- point to the noncommittal editorial tone. With issue #11, the Newsletter officially received an ISSN, making it a "grown- up" effort. With issue #34, October 1991, an official letters-to-the-editor column, "From the Mailbox," appeared. In n.s. #13, November 1991, a formal linkage between the Newsletter and the bulletin board SERIALST was announced, with Book Reviews 183 potentially more spillover in topics, more room for discussion of NSPI news items (a useful service to be sure), and SERIALST's becoming "moderated." While any one of these changes is not striking of itself, collectively they il- lustrate growing sophistication and re- sponsiveness to the technology and wishes of the readership. The Newsletter is quickly produced, avidly read, widely distributed, and full of information on the latest round of price increases from the biggest publish- ers, projections from subscription agents, reports from significant conferences and workshops, letters written by serials librarians protesting egregious pub- lisher practices, responses from publish- ers, and announcements of good sessions at library meetings. It is easy to subscribe to, a good read, a quick read, worth the small amount of disk space it takes to save it, and worth reviewing every few months just to remember the details. The Newsletter is as good as it can be given current constraints. It could be im- proved in some ways, but most of them would take financial commitment in the form of systematically pursuing contribu- tions, increasing the number of contribu- tions, and doing a great deal of editing and editorial work, some research, and some more writing. A little less editorial neutrality would enliven the editor's column. I do not know precisely what NSPI's distribution method is, but it would be useful to have a widely acces- sible archive file to access via file transfer protocol and to search via standard soft- ware. At the moment, one can receive back issues on application to the editor, or if one has been clever and prescient, one has saved all the files electronically on one's computer hard disk, or even on diskettes. Readers like me have been foolish and printed the copies, leaving them lying around like so many conven- tional paper newsletters, and have lost half the benefit of subscribing to elec- tronic journals in the first place, the benefit of "intelligent" documents. In addition to distributing a great deal of information and helping to hook librarians onto e-mail, NSPI has been a 184 College & Research Libraries pioneer in the new genre of electronic serials. By now, as directories of e-serials quickly show, librarians have more elec- tronic communication forums than any other profession. The lesson to be learned is that electronic serials, even when physically unprepossessing and produced on shoestring budgets, can be highly visible and powerful. Almost anyone with an idea, commit- ment, and spare time, at an institution with network connections and a half- friendly computer center, can start an e-list or newsletter or even a journal, and possibly should. The networks so far are subsidized. It is an excellent time to ex- periment, to find out what the commu- nity needs and wants, to learn what the community supports over time and in what form. Eventually, all these publica- tions will be more sophisticated, more commonplace, less of a novelty. While they will undoubtedly be "better," it will be hard to match the early days' excite- ment we still feel as we log on to our e-mail and LISTSERV, or the Mailer Dae- mon bring us the next issue of our cur- rent favorites, of which NSPI is most certainly one.-Ann Okerson, Association of Research Libraries, Washington, D.C. DePew, John N. A Library, Media and Preservation Handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1991. 441 p. (ISBN 0-87436-543-0). LC 91-16501. The national concern for preserving the intellectual content of great research collections impinges increasingly on the jobs, time, and attention of librarians who are not preservation specialists. For these professionals, as well as for those in smaller institutions, this is a useful and interesting book. It is generally successful in terms of its stated aims of bringing together a por- tion of the vast literature of the past two decades on the conservation and preser- vation of library materials and of making it available to those who have little knowledge of preservation. It is, then, designed as an introduction "to the basic environmental controls, materials, processes and techniques ... required to house and preserve library materials." March 1992 The organization and range of topics treated make it clear that DePew under- stands preservation in the broadest possible sense, that preventive measures from climate control to disaster pre- paredness are as important as salvage activities, and that non print media merit the same consideration as paper. The handbook is divided into nine sections covering paper and papermaking; the environment; care and handling of li- brary materials; binding and in-house repair; acid paper and brittle books; pho- tographic, audio, and magnetic media; surveys of buildings and collections; dis- aster preparedness and recovery; and preservation services, suppliers, and ed- ucational opportunities. Ten appendices supply further details, specifications, sample forms and surveys, and tech- niques. Because the language of preserva- tion is complex and technical, a short glossary is provided, and a more complete glossary is planned as a companion volume. The reference bibliography at the end of each section is a useful tool. The handbook falls short, however, of being a definitive, all-purpose summary of the state of preservation knowledge. For example, because of limitations on space, DePew deliberately excludes dis- cussion of the administration and or- ganization of preservation activities, referring readers to the Association of Research Libraries' Preservation Organi- zation and Staffing, SPEC Kit 160 (Wash- ington, D.C., 1990) and works by noted librarians in the field. In addition, other omissions and a troubling lack of balance among the is- sues considered and the level of detail in their treatment detract from the book's value. The author's criteria for treating certain topics at length, while only sum- marizing others, are not articulated. The book begins, for instance, with a very, perhaps unnecessarily, detailed section (forty pages) on paper and papermak- ing. Highly interesting for the nonspe- cialist, it leads one to expect a similar level of attention to the treatment of paper. Several aspects of this treatment are discussed, with more attention given to deacidification (fifteen pages), a tech-