College and Research Libraries


his attempt to use the early history of the 
book as a paradigm for the continuing 
emergence of present-day electronic com-
munications technologies. His notion of 
the importance of the free market in the 
development of late medieval information 
dissemination carries with it the echoes of 
similar debates on the desirability of com-
mercially viable networks as opposed to 
publicly supported ones outside the 
market structure. The question of com-
petition between the old scriptographical 
tradition and the new typographical 
science is likewise reflected in the current 
struggle between the proponents of the 
paperless society and those whose ideas of 
scholarship and culture are inextricably 
bound to the printed book as artifact. 

This volume is an original and valua-
ble addition to the literature of the 
book's history, but the force of its argu-
ment is somewhat diluted by its sheer 
size and the degree of detail to which it 
resorts to buttress its premises. A more 
general statement of its principal theses, 
with a less elaborately documented 
defense of them, would probably be a 
desirable middle ground for most poten-
tial readers; in its present form it demands 
an intense and prolonged concentration 
which is perhaps more appropriate to the 
narrowest technical specializations than 
to more broadly conceived humanistic 
views of the history of the book.-James 
Henry Spohrer, University of California, 
Berkeley. 

Cataloging Heresy: Challenging the Stan-
dard Bibliographic Product. Proceed-
ings of the Congress for Librarians, 
February 18, 1991, St. John's Univer-
sity, Jamaica, New York, with addi-
tional contributed papers. Ed. Bella 
Hass Weinberg. Medford, N.J.: 
Learned Information, 1992. 217p. $30 
(ISBN 0-938734-60-1). LC 92-9374. 
Although the title Cataloging Heresy 

might suggest that this book proposes 
radically different ways of looking at cat-
aloging and bibliographic control, it is in-
stead a rather useful overview of some of 
the problems with uniform titles, subject 
headings, classification, and the descrip-
tion of special types of library materials. 

Book Reviews 77 

Editor Bella Hass Weinberg has com-
piled a well-edited volume of papers 
from the 1991 Congress for Librarians at 
St. John's University. It provides a frame-
work for library school students and 
practitioners to think critically about cat-
aloging data in standard bibliographic 
records. Managers who look for the most 
expeditious, most economical method to 
process library rna terials are warned of 
the conflicts and inaccuracies inherent in 
shared records. The papers examine 
what data should be included in these 
shared bibliographic records and how 
those data might be altered in response 
to a given collection, special type of 
material, or special user group. 

Part 1 consists of edited papers from 
ten invited speakers as well as intro-
ductory and concluding remarks. The 
seven contributed articles in Part 2 remind · 
us that for some types of materials (special 
collections of literature and music, musical 
sound recordings, nonprint materials, 
digital cartographic databases), stan-
dard practices may not be adequate. 

The Library of Congress is attacked, as 
usual, for not keeping up with current, 
politically correct terminology in its Li-
brary of Congress Subject Headings and 
for its practice of assigning insufficient 
and inadequate headings and subdivi-
sions (articles by Sanford Berman and 
Hope Olson). Fortunately, alternatives 
and positive recommendations for fu-
ture direction are provided. The reader 
is also reminded of the increased efforts 
on the part of the Library of Congress, as 
the national bibliographic agency, to in-
form and consult widely on changes to 
cataloging policy in order to reflect con-
sensus within the library community 
(article by John Byrum). 

Apart from criticisms of Library of 
Congress Subject Headings, there are the 
expected papers on the shortcomings 
of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 
Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, 
and Library of Congress classification. 
Other papers provide wonder-ful histori-
cal background for library school stu-
dents and those in the profession who may 
have forgotten about the National Library 
of Medicine classification (Sally Sinn), 



78 College & Research Libraries 

the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (Cathy 
Whitehead), the Bliss classification sys-
tem (Alan R. Thomas), and OCLC and 
RLIN standards and practices to meet 
the needs of individual libraries (Liz 
Bishoff I Glenn Patton and Ed Glazier, re-
spectively). The biases and problems 
with descriptive cataloging are pointed 
out by Norman Anderson. An index by 
Ed Swanson should add to the volume's 
usefulness as a supplemental text in li-
brary schools. The exceptionally tiny 
type used in many of the examples and 
notes almost requires a magnifying glass 
to read. 

Several papers specifically focus on 
academic libraries. Mary Parr's "Stan-
dard Cataloging Data and the Academic 
Library: The Technical Services Manager's 
Point of View'' provides a very brief iden-
tification of questions and an addendum 
of pragmatic opinion on what to do with 
inaccurate or superseded data on copy. 
She reminds catalogers of cuttering var-
iations due to changed rules for main 
entry, classification decision differences 
for general indexes and bibliographies, 
variant practices for traced and not traced 
series, typographical errors on copy, and 
erroneous data printed in publications 
with CIP copy, including fixed call num-
bers. Additionally, academic libraries will 
find useful information in several of the 
other papers about cataloging needs for 
special collections (an article by Patricia 
Elliott and Celia Bakke) and for special 
types of materials (articles by Charles 
Whitlow, Bob Armintor, and PohChin 
Lai and Ming-Kan Wong). The article by 
Sook-Hyun Kim examines the practice of 
including serials holdings information in 
notes in bibliographic records, rather than 
relegating such information to a linked 
holdings record. 

Standards change over time and 
should be questioned periodically in 
order to improve and to develop even 
better standards. As noted in the article 
by Sheila Intner, it is not enough just to 
teach current practices. Students should 
also be introduced to nonstandard sys-
tems and organizational theory so they 
will be prepared to design future biblio-
graphic systems. 

January 1993 

Cataloging practices have long recog-
nized the need and desire to permit var-
iations for particular types of materials 
and for needs of special users. This is 
reflected in the existence of cataloging 
rule options and rule interpretations and 
in the acceptance of specialized thesauri 
and classification schemes-all part of the 
standard bibliographic record. Economic 
pressures to accept shared bibliographic 
records blindly must be weighed against 
the possible negative impact on access to 
the local collection and the needs of local 
users. This compilation of papers as-
sures that we will retain that perspec-
tive.-Barbara B. Tillett, University of 
California, San Diego, La Jolla. 

Collectiotr Management: A New Trea-
tise. Ed. by Charles B. Osburn and Ross 
Atkinson. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI, 1991. 
494p. in 2 vols. $75.25 per volume (ISBN 
1-55938-231-7) LC 91-33499. 
This New Treatise is a sequel of sorts, 

following by nearly a dozen years the 
similar compilation edited by Robert D. 
Stueart and George B. Miller, Jr., Collec-
tion Development in Libraries: A Treatise. It 
has been issued by the same publisher, 
appears in the same series as its prede-
cessor, and is virtually indistinguishable 
from it in design and format. It is tempt-
ing, therefore, simply to read this collec-
tion of essays as Stueart/Miller Revised. 

Upon closer examination~ however, it 
·becomes clear that this is a very different 
work. In the first place, the editors of New 
Treatise, in contrast to their forerunners, 
have been freed from the mission of filling a 
gaping hole in the professional literature. A 
glance at the bibliographic notes in these 
volumes demonstrates that the 1980s were 
busy times for authors writing on the 
various fields subsumed under collection 
management; many of them may have 
been inspired to some degree by articles 
appearing in the first Treatise. Charles 
Osburn and Ross Atkinson, in their brief 
forward, emphasize the dynamism, evolu-
tion, diversity, and challenges evident in 
collection management, and they appear to 
have accepted as their primary goal the 
provision of a forum for critiques, new 
ideas, revisions, and glimpses of future