College and Research Libraries


92 College & Research Libraries 

able to respond to technological change 
despite budgetary constraints. The Uni-
versity of Georgia experience differs from 
the other three in that the library has 
opted to maintain the university's own lo-
cally developed system, MARVEL, with a 
batch mode to reduce cataloging cost, and 
to cooperate closely with the campus com-
puter center to develop its programs. It re-
sponded to its own institutional needs by 
being a partner with the computer center. 

To respond to and capitalize on one's 
own unique institutional environment 
with its specific and special needs and ca-
pabilities is perhaps the key to the survey 
findings. As the report concludes in its 
overview, 

it is important to recognize that management 
processes and automated systems of these or-
ganizations were developed within unique sets 
of environment factors . . . the benefits of these 
case studies lies in noting how each institution 
and its library responded to technological 
change within the context of its institutional 
goals, objectives, and priorities . 

The report has another cautionary note. 
Automation does not result in reduced op-
erating costs. And perhaps more serious 
yet, the true costs are difficult to ascertain. 
The four case histories provide interest-
ing, indeed illuminating, albeit brief, de-
scriptions of four success stories of how 
these libraries responded to the challenge 
by meeting their respective institutional 
needs within their specific institutional 
environment. The cases illustrated admin-
istrative savoir faire and professional vi-
sion as well as expertise, but the cold facts 
of cost estimates and cost-benefit analysis 
remain elusive. If one may wish for more 
from this very useful study, perhaps it 
would be that not only success stories are 
studied. If only some libraries would in-
struct us with their stories of thwarted 
hopes and failed experiments! So often we 
learn more from failures than from 
successes.-¥. T. Feng, Harvard College Li-
brary, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Carpenter, Kenneth E. The First 350 Years 
of the Harvard University Library: Descrip-
tion of an Exhibition . Cambridge: Har-
vard Univ. Library, 1986. 216 p. $20. 

January 1988 

Whatever one wishes to call it-a collec-
tion of collections, a library of libraries, the 
world's largest privately supported li-
brary, an international collection, or sim-
ply many tubs sailing the bibliographical 
seas on their individual bottoms-the Har-
vard University Library is a phenomenon 
that commands admiration and respect. 
After 350 years of existence it celebrated its 
many achievements with this catalog to an 
exhibition documenting its course into the 
contemporary world. The reader quickly 
perceives the library's evolution from a 
struggling provincial outpost to a period 
of unprecedented collection building be-
ginning in the latter part of the nineteenth 
century. The story concludes with Har-
vard's approach to the preservation of all 
that it has so assiduously gathered during 
its long history, and its need to control its 
collections with the use of automation and · 
its own library information system. Har-
vard, in effect, has seen it all, as is made 
clear by this careful gathering of incidents 
and personalities from the copious rec-
ords of the library's past. 

The message is clear. This mighty insti-
tution has a past to be reckoned with. In its 
long life, it has participated in more than 
one kind of revolution and has instigated, 
on the bibliographical side, quite a few of 
its own. With its own rich historical 
experience-one might say lineage-the 
Harvard University Library can take on 
whatever comes its way. One of the vir-
tues of this volume is that it gives a broad 
perspective of change and durability 
within a unique institution from which the 
thoughtful reader can draw the lessons of 
history, or at least the history of libraries. 

The presentation is simple and direct, 
enabling the reader to .become engaged at 
any point that attracts an interest. More 
than eighty years were selected to estab-
lish the inevitability of Harvard's great-
ness. Each chosen year signifies an event 
that melds into the ultimate character of 
the institution and presumably affects it 
forever. It is a persistent gathering of 
strength and diversity with only a trace, 
here and there, of puffery or unnecessary 
hyperbole. The Harvard library becomes, 
as one moves through the years, truly the 



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94 College & Research Libraries 

sum of its parts, and then some. 
Each date and its selected topic is fol-

lowed by a short essay. These vary in 
length and tone as they develop individ-
ual themes that crisscross the library's his-
tory, usually supported with a good lacing 
of facts and anecdote~. A high level of in-
terest is maintained through the copious 
use of illustrations, adding to the sense of 
destiny embodied in the era of Justin Win-
sor and the great period of collection 
building that followed. The collection at 
this point begins to dominate the scene 
and remains the focal point despite the in-
evitable need to be operationally and 
physically up-to-date . 

The range of the chronologically ar-
ranged topics places the Harvard library 
and its manifold collections in their many 
worlds. "A Harvard Library Book Helps 
Defeat the British" is an appropriate 
wording for 1775. "Harvard's Librarians 
Begin to Act Professionally'' signals an 
early awakening, certainly for 1827, 
among the librarians, although there is 
relatively little to be told about the great · 
mass of staff which made the library work 
day in and day out .. The inevitability of 
fund-raising for a private institution was 
noted in 1842 with ''Harvard First Suc-
cessfully Raises Funds to Fill Gaps in the 
Collections.'' Institutional inventiveness 
is heralded with ''The First American 
Card Catalog for Users is Proposed" in 
1860. The anniversary year of 1986 is 
marked by five essays, illustrated with a 
grim view of Harvard's storage library set 
forlornly in a wooded area. Throughout 
these engaging short pieces we are able to 
capture glimpses of Justin Winsor, Francis 
James Child, Charles W. Eliot, Archibald 
Cary Coolidge, William A. Jackson, Philip 
Hofer, Keyes Metcalf and others who con-
tributed mind and matter to the library's 
greatness. 

Beyond the events and individuals that 
have given Harvard its distinctive place, 
certain pervasive themes exist. Harvard, 
of course, has been preeminent in its at-
tempt to capture the word, now locked 
into a still-growing collection of 11.2 mil-
lion volumes. The need to give a whole-
ness to this vast number, especially within 
Ha_rvard's federated system of libraries, is 

January 1988 

a persistent motif. With books consciously 
placed everywhere on its campus and 
closely identified with their immediate au-
dience, control defers to coordination, 
and ultimately, to diversity. •character, 
sensibility, and an awareness of history 
become integrative forces rather than cur-
rent management theory. The Harvard li-
brary is justly proud of its ability to inno-
vate, another unmistakable theme as well 
as a trait which will continue to be called 
up. 

This volume has succeeded in making 
the history of one great library come alive. 
As an introduction it points the way to a 
fuller account that should come. The 
sources are there and the story a rich one. 
Until that time, this volume will serve the 
general reader, the historian of libraries 
and learning, and above all, perhaps, 
present and future librarians who, in turn, 
serve Harvard's great library.-Robert Ro-
senthal, The Joseph Regenstein Library, Uni-
versity of Chicago, Illinois. 

Internationalizing Library and Informa-
tion Science Education: A Handbook of 
Policies and Procedures in Administra-
tion and Curriculum. Ed. by John F. 
Harvey and Frances Laverne Carroll. 
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1987. 
402p. $49.95 (ISBN 0-313-23728-X). LC 
86-9946. 
The first words of the introduction to 

this collection of articles by some twenty-
eight authors assert that ''as far as librari-
anship is concerned, nationalism 'is dead 
and internationalism has replaced it." 
This thought, posited a decade ago by 
Maro Chauveinc in IFLA 's First Fifty Years, 
Achievement and Challenge in International 
Librarianship ( ed. by Will em R. H. Koops 
and Joachim Wieder. Munich: Verlag 
Dokumentation, 1977), is certainly argua-
ble today if one takes the United States as 
one's point of reference. Patel, Schick, 
and Harvey himself (coeditor) point out in 
their chapter titled ''An International Data 
and Information Collection and Research 
Program'' that the 1980s have seen a shift 
in cooperation and information exchange 
from developed to developing nations. It 

· is now the economically emerging areas 
that, perforce, have an international out-