College and Research Libraries shall therefore meet the editor's request for a review of it largely by an attempt at a synopsis. In his introductory section the author refers to an alleged shortage of good ad- ministrative material for government serv- ice and asks if it is going to be necessary to turn again and again to the business world, to the legal profession and other places in the hope of locating capable ad- ministrators. Librarians will not have any difficulty in transferring this question to their own sphere. T h e author then goes on to discuss the possibility of the government recruiting potential adminis- trative talent for its own service, and pro- ceeds to consider the conditions under which it can be brought to light and de- veloped. F o l l o w i n g this is some discus- sion of the functions of administration. Librarians will, I think, in the main, agree that this includes both policy making and the function of management. In section 2 he gives a vivid picture of the able administrator in action, a man " w h o has formulated a little nucleus of well-thought-out purposes and basic poli- cies . . . so that every proposal . . . can be put to the test of these fundamental aims." H i s ideal administrator consults his staff to get real criticism and ideas; he does not merely go through the motions. T h i s section the reviewer especially com- mends to young administrators still elastic enough to be affected by it. I wonder if the story of how one young assistant fath- ered an idea on his chief in order to get it accepted could still be told of this gen- eration. Section 3 defining the abilities desired in an administrator, is relatively slight, but section 4, dealing with two kinds of thinking desirable in an admin- istrator, rational inference, that is j u d g - ment based on the analysis of factual data, and the capacity for intuitive sound deci- sions where the information is inadequate or there is little time for investigation, is admirable. Section 5, the last one, is short and in the main a summary, with the conclusions that administrative ability is a complicated pattern of many talents and that the desired abilities must, to a large extent, be learned. T h e failure of most of our large uni- versity libraries to develop young ad- ministrators to go out and head other scholarly libraries is marked in my time. It is to be hoped that the current and next generations will do better. T h i s pam- phlet should help t h e m . — S y d n e y B. Mitchell, University of California, Berke- ley. The Library of Tomorrow: a Sympo- sium. E m i l y M i l l e r Danton, ed. American L i b r a r y Association, 1 9 3 9 . i g i p . $ 2 . 5 0 . I N HIS forecast of an ideal Israel the prophet J o e l predicted, " Y o u r old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." In this symposium M r s . Danton has accomplished more than J o e l anticipated. T h e twenty contributors in- clude the librarian emeritus of Congress; four ex-presidents, the secretary and a division chief of the American L i b r a r y Association; a university president; a pro- fessor of education; two professors in li- brary schools; and the heads of public, university, children's, special and National Y o u t h Administration libraries. T w o outstanding non-librarian advocates of public libraries, M r s . Dorothy Canfield Fisher and W i l l i a m E . M a r c u s of the M o n t c l a i r ( N . J . ) Public L i b r a r y Board, complete the list. L i b r a r y users per se are not included. T h e s e contributors vary widely in their MARCH, 1940 183 experience in and w i t h libraries as w e l l as in the types of library w o r k they discuss. T h e i r contributions, nevertheless, have at least t w o common characteristics. T h e older members of the group as w e l l as the younger see visions. P r a c t i c a l l y none of them pays enough attention to the past even to dream about it. Several points of fairly general agreement are noticeable but there is no insistence on regimentation or close approach to uniform approval of technique or the evaluation of many speci- fic phases of library w o r k . " T o - m o r r o w " seems to range from just around the corner to the not v e r y remote year 1 9 7 6 . Social forecasts tend to f o l l o w three f a i r l y general patterns: first, a f u t u r e society based on radical differences, good and bad, f r o m the time in w h i c h the fore- caster w r i t e s ; second, a society in which good or bad social changes evolve from contemporary conditions w i t h relatively little essential dissimilarity; third, those based on fantasy and not to be realized under conditions generally considered nor- mal. T h i s book is definitely of the second type w i t h emphasis on the optimistic v i e w - point. N o t many things appear in the forecasts that are new or which are not easily recognizable as developments of present conditions or practices. G e n e r a l mechanization of buildings, equipment, and administrative techniques are suggested at one end of the composite picture. A n " a t - tempt to stock the literature of the left (pamphlets, books, and periodicals) in quantities that are adequate for the pres- ent and potential d e m a n d " is at the other end. T h e carte blanche character of this professional menu permits a f a i r l y w i d e variety between these extremes. A composite graph of the suggested changes w o u l d show an uninterrupted curve of sharp ascent w i t h an upper terminus approaching the incommensura- ble if not trailing into the infinite. F e d - eral aid is usually postulated w h e n men- tioned or discussed. T h e most specific article, which seems to be most generally approved by reviewers, is entitled " N a - tional Leadership f r o m W a s h i n g t o n " and stands or falls w i t h federal grants. T h e pervasively optimistic tone of the book ignores the possible operation of the l a w of diminishing returns in readers' interests, public conviction of the essential place of libraries, or increasing funds to meet an- ticipated increases in use and expense. Probably this is the main weakness of the symposium as a whole. T h e library's past justifies hopeful anticipation. N e v e r - theless, it is not defeatism to insist that permanent g r o w t h must be intensive as w e l l as extensive. M o r e readers do not necessarily mean the maximum of public service. W h a t they read as w e l l as h o w much is important. T h o u g h several arti- cles inject this note at times, it is f a r from dominant. In the very frequent insistence on f u - ture cooperation, the mutual character of cooperation is less stressed than equaliza- tion. In social service, as in a city w a t e r supply, there is a difference between build- ing a reservoir high enough for pressure sufficient to supply all levels of the ter- ritory served and opening the reservoir outlets in an attempt to raise the general level of the sources of the reservoir's supply. M o s t of the contributors are primarily interested in public libraries or extension services. Reference and research needs and services consequently receive compara- tively little attention. President W r i s - ton's views on college and university libraries are both discriminating and provocative in their suggestions of selec- 184 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES tive limitation. It is unlikely, however, that the excellent special collections on Lincoln, Napoleon I, or American poetry at B r o w n will be drastically reduced or that agreement on limitation of college and university libraries w i l l be soon or easily reached. Contradictory as it may seem, this very lack of definiteness and agreement makes the book of more than temporary interest and value. T h e library must be unsettled in a world of social confusion. T h e points of agreement reached independently indi- cate possible avenues of advance. D i s - agreement indicates more than one road to improvement. It w i l l not be popular to note that, while the potential social service of the library is well recognized, its necessary and often desirable limitation by general social conditions is not always as frankly admitted. F u t u r e depressions and dimin- ishing interest in reading are quite possi- ble. Plans for forced entrenchment should be in readiness by the most optimis- tic librarian even if not publicized or acted upon until unavoidable. Librarians w h o do their own thinking will be ready to make these reservations. T h e y w i l l not mistake the occasional evangelistic outbursts for factual state- ments. T h o s e w h o think by proxy w i l l for the most part find the excess optimism more profitably stimulating than a similar excess of even plausible p e s s i m i s m . — F r a n k K. Walter, University of Minnesota, Min- neapolis. Vitalizing a College Library. B. Lamar Johnson. A m e r i c a n L i b r a r y Associa- tion, 1 9 3 9 . I 2 2 p . $2. MORE AND more the college library must be regarded in its relationship to the other educational divisions on the campus. Librarians have recognized this, perhaps more keenly than professorial and adminis- trative groups, and here and there a f e w bold spirits have, on occasions, made threatening gestures toward reform. A t Stephens College, the administration, the library staff, and the teachers, recognizing the essential unity of library w o r k and teaching, discarded conventional library practices for a program which w o u l d bring students, faculty, and books together and which would make it more nearly possible for the student to associate with books as in a private library. B y establishing the dual position of librarian and dean of in- struction, by employing in this position a man whose training, experience, and inter- est have been primarily in the field of teaching, and by securing a special founda- tion grant to conduct an experimental library program, the Stephens College ad- ministration set the stage for the library program described by D r . Johnson in Vitalizing a College Library. T h e library program described provides for decentralized service under centralized administration, for classroom libraries (languages and dramatics w i t h modifica- tion of the plan in English and other hu- manities), division libraries (social study and science departmental libraries adja- cent to teaching quarters under supervi- sion of subject-librarian specialists), the use of the general library for informal student-teacher conferences as well as for formal class instruction, joint library- teacher responsibility in instructing stu- dents in the use of books and libraries, book collections in residence halls and in the infirmary, and for the encouragement and building up of student private li- braries. T h e range of services commonly thought of in college library w o r k has been expanded to include the circulation of MARCH, 1940 185