College and Research Libraries


tivity; it is not yet being developed from 
knowledge and data collected within the 
field. 

Chapter 14 is entitled "Theories of File 
Organization" and the work described in 
this chapter was supported in part by the 
National Science Foundation. The authors 
say that their general theoretical structure 
is based on the view that: "1. Large files rep-
resent a multiple level structure whose char-
acteristics are determined by both the physi-
cal parameters of the storage form and the 
logical problems in evaluating relevancy. 
2. Such a structure, in order to be responsive 
to the usage of the file, must provide some 
procedure for reorganization in terms of the 
changing usage." 

"With this view, the purpose of informa-
tion systems can be considered as providing 
relevant responses to an environment" . . . 
and "the attempt must be made continually 
to fit the organization of the stored re-
sponses to the environment rather than vice 
versa." 

In their effort to define file items the 
authors adopt five premises: ( 1 ) the con-
tents of a file should reflect its total utiliza-
tion, that is, both the contents of a library 
and representations of the requesters, of the 
requests, etc.; ( 2) the contents of the file 
are homogeneous; (3) a quantitative model 
and measure for relevancy are possible; ( 4) 
there is no essential relationship between the 
method of representing an item and the 
organization of groups of items into a file; 
( 5) organization is the grouping of items 
or records which are then handled as units 
and lose to that extent their individual 
identity. 

They then proceed to weight indexing 
terms for both indexing and request efforts. 
They also attempt a definition of relevancy 
by measuring the degree of association of 
relevancy, closeness of terms, and argu-
ments, employing connection or association 
matrices. 

The last three sections of the chapter 
deal with the logical organization of terms, 
by means of classification, subject headings, 
etc.; organization by activity to recognize 
the ways in which people use the collections; 
and reorganization to make the files meet 
new requirements. 

The authors have combined their own 

efforts and the work of others currently ac-
tive in this field into a stimulating chapter. 
The result should encourage other investi-
gators to select the portions from mathe-
matics which they require to provide an im-
proved understanding of the topic of file 
organization. 

Chapter 15, Theories of System Design, 
represents work supported in part by the 
United States Air Force. It is an effort to 
make a mathematical model of system de-
sign in ISR. While stating that the opera-
tional interrelationships are more important 
than the physical interrelationships, the 
authors use tape units, core memories, drum 
memories, disk units, and rotary card files as 
examples in their modeling. This chapter 
should point out to the nonmathematical, 
non-system-oriented librarian the hazard, if 
not the sheer folly, of making choices and 
decisions relating to new equipment and 
methods which will produce results he cannot 
anticipate or control, at a time when experts 
are still working out the theoretical founda-
tions of his profession. Conversely, this 
chapter can suggest to these librarians that 
the employment of systems experts for their 
problems increases the probability of getting 
satiifactory results in comparison to the 
results of do-it-yourself efforts.-C. D. Gull, 
Indiana University. 

History of American Schoolbooks. By 
Charles Carpenter. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press, 1963. 332p. 
illus. $6.50. (62-10747). 

Librarians who have been privileged to 
examine prospective gift collections of books 
in lofts, smokehouses, and garrets, are well 
acquainted with the slender little volumes, 
bound in overprinted olive, tan, or blue 
boards, that constituted early American 
schoolbooks. Webster's spellers, Lindley 
Murray's grammars, Morse's geographies, 
McGuffey's readers, and other volumes pre-
pared for school use by such worthies as 
Frost, Rush, Olney, Hunt, and Spencer, prob-
ably interlace 90 per cent of the nineteenth-
century Americana collections still in priv-
ate hands, but we know surprisingly little 
about them. 

Carpenter's History of American School-

436 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



books makes a real contribution to our 
knowledge of this untrodden field, yet it is 
difficult to say just what that contribution 
is. It is easier to tell what the book is not 
than what the book is. It is not a reference 
book, although the well indexed mass of 
data which it presents will no doubt make it 
useful to many for reference purposes. It is 
not a bibliographical study-the person who 
attempts such a study will have to be a 
hardy soul, since schoolbooks are a biblio-
graphical Slough of Despond-yet the book 
is laden with bibliographical detail. It is not 
a book trade history, lacking as it does al-
most any reference to the publishing indus-
try or its economic impact upon the Ameri-
can scene. It is not even a good narrative 
history, since its attempt to enumerate as 
many as possible of the myriad nineteenth-
century school texts reduces its interest for 
sustained reading. 

The book will, however, be a desideratum 
for almost any private or institutional col-
lection that has orientation to the nineteenth 
century, whether it be to education, history, 
bibliography, culture, or sociology. Con-
veniently grouping schoolbooks under the 
various disciplines they represented-prim-
ers, elocution manuals, copybooks, rhetorics, 
general and mental science texts, etc.-the 
author briefly discusses progress in the writ-
ing of each from its beginning in this coun-
try to the early twentieth century, relating 
interesting facts and anecdotes about au-
thors, book use, schoolbook adoption, and 
giving even occasional personal commen-
tary upon the appropriateness of a particular 
volume or style, or speculating upon the pro-
spective future of the genre. As was said 
earlier, the book defies categorization. 

Unfortunately the book is marred by poor 
editing. There are too many typographical 
errors in it, and this reader noted at least 
two occasions where a word or words ap-
peared to be dropped from the text. Al-
though it draws exclusively upon secondary 
sources for its information, the book repre-
sents a wide range of study and is well 
documented. Its annotated bibliography fur-
nishes a good guide to further reading, 
and its twenty-page, eight-point index is a 
thorough key to the text. It will no doubt 
be widely purchased and used.-D. K. 

SEPTEMBER 1964 

The Future of the Research Library. By 
Verner W. Clapp. Urbana: University of 
Illinois Press, 1964. 114 pp. $4.50. (64-
10352). 

No research library today can acquire or 
house all of the recorded knowledge its 
users demand, and none can make what it 
receives accessible to scholars quickly 
enough to meet their needs. Although li-
braries still strive for self -sufficiency, the 
impracticality of having everything imme-
diately at hand has been accepted, and shar-
ing of resources through a variety of de-
vices such as interlibrary lending, coopera-
tive acquisition, bibliographies, union cata-
logs, and photocopying increasingly has 
been employed. But research libraries still 
fall short--even the ' largest of them--of 
performing their proper function of enabling 
scholars to identify the library materials 
relevant to their research and of providing 
immediate access to copies for their use. 
They will continue to fall short of maximum 
effectiveness unless self -sufficiency can be 
increased at lower costs and sharing of re-
sources made comparable with local avail-
ability. 

Verner Clapp, president of the Council 
on Library Resources, examines these in-
adequancies and problems as well as the ob-
stacles to their correction in this 1963 
Windsor Lecture in Librarianship at the 
University of Illinois. Clapp is eminently 
quallfied to address himself to "the future 
of the research library." From 1922 to 1956 
he was a member of the staff of the Library 
of Congress, the last nine years as chief as-
sistant librarian. He has contributed to li-
brary development around the world, and 
in 1960 received the Lippincott award for 
distinguished service in the profession of 
librarianship. Since assuming his present 
responsibility, President Clapp has approved 
the expenditure of several millions of dol-
lars in search of solutions to the problems 
of libraries generally and of research li-
braries in particular. For many years, there-
fore, he has had a ringside seat from which 
to observe the multiplication of research 
library problems as the quantity of informa-
tion increased and the urgency of research 
intensified demand for prompt access to it. 

Among the problems the author identi-

437