College and Research Libraries


ponential rate to the point that within twen-
ty years low-cost computing and storage will 
be economically available to everyone. It 
will be possible to store the contents of a 
library the size of the University of Illinois 
on 563 disks at a cost of $10 per disk. 

Such enormous potential for change pro-
vides ample material for speculation, in 
which many of the other authors of these 
papers indulge, often in arresting and 
thought-provoking ways. Lancaster and his 
two research associates, Laura Drasgow and 
Ellen Marks, close the proceedings with an 
article that attempts to divine the future of 
libraries and librarians. The future they 
foresee for libraries is bleak. Libraries will 
decline as the development of computers 
and telecommunications makes them 
obsolescent. Librarians may fare somewhat 
more happily, if they are prepared by abil-
ity and training to function as independent 
information specialists. 

One does not have to agree with the spe-
cific scenarios the authors of these papers 
foresee to understand that change in in-
formation technology is rapid and accelerat-
ing. Librarians will not have the opportu-
nity to adjust to it in the leisurely way. that 
past trends have permitted. Tomorrow is 
almost here and few, if any, of us are pre-
pared for it.-Richard]. Talbot, University 
of Massachusetts, Amherst. 

Current Concepts in Library Management. 
Martha Boaz, editor. Littleton, Colo.: 
Libraries Unlimited, 1979. 289p. $18.50 
U.S. and Canada; $22 elsewhere. LC 79-
20734. ISBN 0-87287-204-1. 
Editor Martha Boaz states that this work 

is "intended as a primer in the field, it 
attempts to assist library school students to 
become familiar with the purposes, princi-
ples, and techniques of administration and 
to provide them with an understanding of 
the objectives, functions, and organization 
of libraries." Students of library science and 
day-to-day practitioners seeking insights 
into current concepts of library management 
from these eleven articles and four appen-
dixes generally will be disappointed . 

Martha Boaz, who contributed more than 
50 percent of the material in this collection, 
leads off with "The Library Administrator's 
Commitment to the Profession and the 

Recent Publications I 461 

Community." This article, which in tone 
and content is reminiscent of a lecture in an 
"Intro to Library Science" class, rides for 
considerable length the old hobbyhorse of 
professionalism. A better beginning would 
have been Neely Gardner's "Current Con-
cepts in Management," which does manage 
to provide a brief overview of general man-
agement theory. 

Peggy Sullivan's "Managing the Public 
Library" is an excellent article. Although 
organized around the concerns and prob-
lems of the public library manager, Sulli-
van's practical observations are useful to all 
library managers. Duane Webster's "Man-
aging the College and University Library" 
reflects the philosophy of the ARL' s Office of 
Management Studies and concentrates on 
what Webster views as the "major concepts 
and trends influencing library managers to-
day." 

Chase Dane observes at the beginning of 
his article on managing the school media 
library that "the school library and the spe-
cial library are alike in that they both must 
serve the larger organization of which they 
are a part." Such a view should not be 
unique to the school library, though it often 
is overlooked by librarians. With the aid of 
113 footnotes, Jerry Cao manages to "define 
and delimit the technical library" in nine-
teen pages. 

Editor Boaz' s "Managing the Library 
School" and "Managing the Planning of 
Facilities for Library and Information Sci-
ence Education Programs" are entirely out 
of place in a work intended as a primer on 
current management concepts. This review-
er also questions the inclusion of Ellsworth 
Mason's " Managing the Planning of Library 
Buildings" in this collection. 

Considering the growing importance of 
computerization in modern libraries, it is 
surprising this collection contains only one 
article on computers. Yet Hillis Griffin's 
"The Application of Computers to Library 
Tasks" does provide a good general over-
view of the steps involved in implementing 
automated functions in a library. The last 
article in the collection, "Extra-Institutional 
Funding" by Martha Boaz, is a brief how-to 
approach to grantsmanship. It does not re-
lay current concepts in grantsmanship, but 
it does suggest old lecture notes. 



462 I College & Research Libraries • September 1980 

The four appendixes, all by the editor 
and all related to library education, consti-
tute thirty-eight pages of unnecessary filler 
in a work whose title suggests its contents 
deal with concepts in library management. 
The title is misleading and, except for a 
couple of the articles which one hopes will 
be reprinted elsewhere, this collection is 
not recommended.-B. Donald Grose, In-
diana University-Purdue University at Fort 
Wayne. 

Thompson, James. An Introduction to Uni-
versity Library Administration. 3d ed. 
London: Clive Bingley; New York: K. G. 
Saur, 1979(?). 160p. $18.75. ISBN 0-
85157-288-X. 
This third edition of a now standard work 

has no imprint date (unseemly for a librar-
ian author!). The issuing date is adjudged to 
be 1979. 

A small volume that is packed with good 
information for a practicing or would-be 
university library administrator, the work is 
a satisfactory, but not extensive, updating of 
the 1974 second edition. Most of the new 
material is compacted at the end or at the 
beginning of the chapters or sections and 
sometimes much too obviously so. 

It is thoroughly British and some sec-
tions, to U.S. readers, will seem to have 
come from another planet, for example, 
". . . the formation of such cooperatives as 
BLAISE and SWALCAP," and frequent 
references to the UGC (University Grants 
Committee), the Parry Report, and the 
Association of University Teachers. Further 
evidence of its intended use as a guide for 
university librarians in the United Kingdom 
is the total absence of any reference to 
OCLC, Inc. 

Thompson writes of the 1908 Anglo-
American catalog code and the 1949 ALA 
cataloging rules, noting that "both of these 
will be displaced by the new Anglo-
American cataloguing rules, first published 
in 1967." This leaves the important and 
controversial AACR 2 unmentioned and 
somewhat in limbo. 

Variances from Thompson's 1974 edition 
as regards computer application to library 
methods are disappointingly few. The addi-
tion of two or three sentences in the section 
on computerized procedures is about the 

extent of it. New cataloging techniques in 
the British university library are described, 
new cqst figures inserted, and a couple of 
paragraphs on detection systems added. 
There is no mention, however, of comput-
erized book charging systems, where pages 
could have been written. 

A section in the chapter on cooperation 
gives a very useful description of the "new" 
British Library and its functions, informa-
tion not included in earlier editions. A 
lengthy paragraph on library cooperative 
projects in England has been added in the 
third edition. 

The book has eight pages of glossy photo-
graphs, six pages of references (dating from 
1940 to 1978), and a scant index. While the 
typesetting is attractive, the lack of trued 
lines detracts from the overall appearance of 
the publication. 

An Introduction to University Library 
Administration, third edition, is recom-
mended for library school libraries, for the 
university library administrator who "reads 
everything," and certainly for British uni-
versity libraries and librarians.-Roscoe 
Rouse, Oklahoma State University, Still-
water. 

"Library Consultants." Ellsworth E. 
Mason, issue editor. Library Trends 
28:339-485 (Winter 1980). $5. ISSN 0024-
2594. (Available from: University of Illi-
nois Press, Urbana, IL 61801.) 
This issue could have been subtitled 

"Nine Papers in Search of a Focus." It was 
a mistake to assume that library consulting, 
because it is a noun, is a unified topic; it's 
not, and the result of trying to force enough 
content to justify a topical approach is a 
mixed success. Perhaps the main problem, 
in terms of reading this issue straight 
through as a book, is that the various au-
thors obviously had quite different audi-
ences in mind as they wrote. Ellsworth 
Mason's contribution concerning building 
consulting, for example, is nearly a diatribe 
aimed at those ignoramuses (library admin-
istrators) who, lacking all sense of aesthetics 
and judgment, build libraries without using 
consultants, while Barbara Markuson's dis-
cussion of consulting in a network environ-
ment may be said to be aimed at the uni-
verse, because it is a topic on which