lib-MOCS-KMC364-20131012114424 Book Reviews More joy of Contracts: An Epicurean Ap- proach to Negotiation, by Kevin Hegarty. Tacoma, Wash.: Tacoma Public Library, 1981. 66p. $10. Order from: Administra- tive Offices, Tacoma Public Library, 1102 Tacoma Ave. South, Tacoma, WA 98402. Hegarty's book, the second edition of his original joy of Contracts (American Li- brary Association, Dallas, Texas, June 1979), has both strengths and weaknesses. The basic strength is one heck of a lot of information about how to negotiate and write a contract that will assure a library that it gets what it pays for from a turnkey automation system. The weakne.c;ses in- volve the organization of the text, the writ- ing style, the specific focus on automated circulation systems, and the physical for- mat of the document. First, the author has clearly fought his way through a contract negotiation for a turnkey "Computerized Library Circula- tion System." The first edition of this book was produced soon after that negotiation was completed. This second edition seems to be augmented on the basis of experience gained in living with the contract. The main text walks the reader through each element of a contract (e.g., terms of agree- ment, specification of governing law, schedule, acceptance testing, etc.), pro- vides sample contract language and adds comments and recommendations for how to cope with specific problems (e. g., negoti- ation of system reliability standards, p. 3-4). While the contract structure and the specification of contract elements may be useful, the real value of the book lies in the comments (e.g., the difference between two percent downtime and five percent downtime over one year is a system that is disabled for 140 additional hours). The practical value of these comments may be measured in wasted dollars, wasted staff hours, or frustrated library patrons. The section on system maintenance (p. 13-15) 319 alone, may be worth the cost of the book. On the negative side of the ledger, the book is somewhat difficult to use, because of its organization. It is composed of a pri- mary section-in outline form-on the ele- ments of a contract between a library and a vendor, and seven secondary sections, in- cluding examples of plans, sub-agreements, and schedules (and a seventeen-item bibli- ography). That is all that appears in the table of contents and there is neither an in- troduction, an overview, nor an index. It is very difficult to find a specific topic of inter- est without skimming through the text it- self. Second, the body of the text is a mixture of sample (or recommended; it isn't clear) contract language (identifiable by use of the word "shall"), comments on the language of particular portions of the contract (some- times labeled "comment " and sometimes not), and cross-references within the book itself (sometimes labeled "Note:"). The mix- ture of different elements-contract lan- guage, narrative, etc.-are sometimes con- fusing. Moreover, there are a number of small grammatical garbles which are slightly distracting. A bit of professional ed- iting would make this document both more readable and more useful. Third, Hegarty focuses on (or uses as an example; it isn't clear) automated circula- tion systems. This would be very useful if that is what the reader intends to buy. However, with a variety of other turnkey automated systems and sources for libraries on the market or soon to be made available (e.g., acquisitions, book fund accounting, cataloging, online bibliographic access), some language about how the contract should be redesigned or revised to account for different systems and services would have made the book more immediately use- ful to more readers. Last, the book comes as a photocopy of a typed original, with a velo binding. The binding of the reviewer's copy broke apart 320 Journal of Library Automation Vol. 14/4 December 1981 the first time it was opened. However, it should be possible to rebind or staple it to- gether if this turns out to be a persistent problem. On balance, for those about to negotiate a contract with a vendor of automated sys- tems and services, the strengths of More loy of Contracts probably outweigh the weak- nesses. One gets what a contract says one will get; any help in writing a thorough, comprehensive, and airtight contract will be of usei-Donald Thompson, University of California Systemwide Administration, Office of the President, Berkeley, Califor- nia. Computer Science Resources: A Guide to Pro- fessional Literature. Compiled and edited by Darlene Myers. White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industry Publications, 1981 . 346p. $59.50 (ASIS members: $47.60), pa- perback. ISBN 0-914236-80-6. This comprehensive guide to the English- language literature of computer sciences Catalogs Qn-time Managed by professionals GRC provides • accurate • flexible • economical COM catalog services Contact Don Gill GENERAL RESEARCH CORPORATION A SUBSIDIARY OF FLOW GENERAL. INC. P.O Box 6770, Santa Barbara. Calofornoa 93111 (805) 964-7724 covers books, journals, technical reports, indexing and abstracting resources, directo- ries, dictionaries, handbooks, newsletters, software resources, proceedings, program- ming languages, and publishers. Its appen- dixes give information relating to career and salary trends, societies and associa- tions, academic computer-center libraries, commercial fairs and shows, and Myers' draft of a proposed expansion of the Library of Congress classification for the computer sciences. As Meyers states in the preface, "The work is designed to serve the needs of researchers, managers, librarians, consul- tants and systems analysts in academic, cor- porate and governmental data processing centers." Computer Science Resources, divided into ten main sections with five appendixes at the back, is on the whole easy to use. Since the book does not have an index, its table of contents becomes the key to infor- mation access. Its wide margins together with fairly large print make it very read- able. However, its unconventional ar- rangement of entries-letter by letter ig- noring conjunctions and prepositions instead of word by word-can be mislead- ing. For instance, "Computers and Urban Society" is arranged ahead of "Computer Survey." The word "and" and spaces be- tween words are ignored; resulting in Computersurban . .. filing before Compu- tersurvey. This practice does not follow the traditional library principle "nothing files before something. " The explanation of the idiosyncratic entry arrangement is only given in the preface. When people use a book for quick reference, they usually skip the preface and the introduction; some users will probably miss many terms as a result. The book is international in scope, rela- tively up-to-date, and informative. English titles published overseas, foreign pub- lishers, and trade fairs and shows pertain- ing to the computer industry are included in the directory. Most titles mentioned have been published since 1970 and many cita- tions are as recent as 1980. The annotations for each entry in "Indexing and Abstracting Resources," "Directories, Dictionaries, Handbooks," and "Software Resources'' are very informative. It would have been ideal if titles in the "Current Books" and "Computer-Related Journals" were also an- notated to aid users in selecting the mate- rials. Subject headings and cross-references used in various sections of the book are not al·ways consistent. For example, in the sec- tion "Current Books," there is a see refer- ence from "A. I. (Artificial Intelligence)" to "Cybernetics/ Artificial Intelligence/Ro- bots," but none from "Artificial Intelli- gence." However, in the section "Computer-Related Journals," the heading is "Artificial Intelligence" with a see also reference to "Cybernetics; Robots," but no reference from "A.l. (Artificial Intelli- gence)." In the "Current Books" section, "Careers/Vocational Guidance" is used as a subject heading. In the "Computer-Related Journals" section, "Employment" becomes the subject. There is no cross reference from either heading to the other in either section. In the "Computer-Related Journals" sec- tion, preceding and succeeding titles are linked by cross-references. The history of title changes is outlined whenever applica- ble under the entries for the current titles. This information is invaluable especially for librarians in identifying variant journal titles. Although there are see references un- der most former titles to current titles, some entries are omitted for previous titles. For example, Injosystems was formerly called Management and Business Automation and later changed to Business Automation with the merging of International Business Auto- mation and International Edition Business Automation. Then there was Business Au- tomation News Analysis Edition published Book Reviews 321 as a supplement to Business Automation. Surprisingly there are no see references un- der "Business Automation" and "Interna- tional Edition Business Automation" to "In- fosystems." Maybe it is because ''Business Automation" is quite similar to "Business Automation News Analysis Edition'' and "International Edition Business Automa- tion" is similar to "International Business Automation" and would have appeared close together if not adjacent to one an- other. Again some users may miss the links to the current titles. It might have been bet- ter to include a separate list for ceased jour- nals. Computer Science Uesources is the result of monumental effort and years of thorough research and careful planning. Its compiler and editor, Darlene Myers has been very active in the computer and information sci- ence field, and is the manager of the Com- puting Information Center at the Univer- sity of Washington. The wealth of information in the book and the currentness of cited materials are the prominent strengths. The flaws mentioned earlier are minor if users read the preface and the in- troduction in each section first. This refer- ence tool is strongly recommended for com- puter industry libraries as well as for medium-sized and large public and aca- demic libraries. Although more current, it does not wholly supplant Ciel Carter's Guide to Reference Sources in the Com- puter Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1974). Carter's entries are all annotated, and some of the citations are not included in the newer work.-Frauces Lau, Blackwell! North America, Beaverton, Oregon.