College and Research Libraries


the book is based upon British conditions. 
I t d r a w s heavily on the a u t h o r ' s personal 
experience and the examples are, t h e r e f o r e , 
examples of British conditions, some of which 
may be different f r o m those in this country. 
T h e terminology will not always be f a m i l i a r 
to the American r e a d e r . F o r example, the 
number of scientific staff in private industry 
research is given as an F . B . I , estimate, which 
refers, of course, to an estimate of the F e d -
e r a t e d British Industries, not to the F e d e r a l 
B u r e a u of Investigation. 

I t is difficult to determine the most likely 
field of usefulness of this book, which falls 
between available t r e a t m e n t s of how to per-
f o r m research, how to organize f o r research 
and how to administer research. P e r h a p s it 
will be of most interest to an audience, as the 
a u t h o r suggests, of "young people j u s t enter-
ing the field of r e s e a r c h " ; or, as D r . J . W . 
T . W a l s h in the f o r e w o r d suggests, to busi-
ness men w h o influence or control research 
p r o g r a m s . — R a l p h R. Shaw, U. S. Department 
of Agriculture Library. 

Books for the A r m y 
Books for the Army. By J o h n Jamieson. 

N e w Y o r k , Columbia University Press, 
1950, xiv, 334p. $4.50. 
T h i s is the best and most complete history 

of the A r m y L i b r a r y Service in W o r l d W a r 
I I which has yet appeared, and it is likely to 
be the definitive one. Jamieson, on the staff 
of the h e a d q u a r t e r s unit of the service, has 
had a foundation g r a n t to p r e p a r e this vol-
ume, and he has apparently used all available 
sources of information. T h e result is a read-
able history of the A r m y L i b r a r y Service 
between 1941 and 1946, which names names 
and dispenses an even-handed justice in point-
ing out failures as well as achievements. All 
in all, it is a creditable piece of w o r k and 
one which is valuable to the profession as it 
should be also to the A r m y in guiding the f u -
t u r e development of its library p r o g r a m in 
peace or in w a r . 

P e r h a p s the most r e m a r k a b l e thing about 
the A r m y L i b r a r y Service in the last w a r 
was t h a t it existed at all, operated as large a 
pr ogram as it did (1200 librarians, 
$21,000,000 and 225,000,000 books), and per-
formed its job as well as it did under the 
circumstances. W a r t i m e demands on the 
service w e r e always g r e a t e r than could be 
satisfied, often completely unpredictable, usu-
ally w o r l d - w i d e in scope, and not seldom 
yielded only to approaches f a r different f r o m 
traditional library practice. Add to this the 
simple fact t h a t the provision of books and 
libraries w a s inevitably a very small p a r t of 
the w a r effort. 

B u t the simple fact remains t h a t many men 
had access to very few or no books f o r many 
months, and t h a t f o r most men ". . . the fail-

ures of the library service overseas over-
shadowed the successes." (p. 11). In p a r t 
this w a s due to mistakes in the over-all or-
ganization of the A r m y L i b r a r y Service and 
in p a r t to the slowness with which the people 
in t h a t service solved the problems they faced. 
T h e m a j o r successes in this l a t t e r direction 
w e r e t w o : the magazine kits and A r m e d 
Services Editions distributed directly to all 
units overseas by mail, and the packaging and 
processing of hard-covered books into self-
contained units before delivery to the indi-
vidual installation. N e i t h e r of these w e r e 
worked out early in the w a r or carried as f a r 
as they might have been, but they solved the 
w o r s t problems. 

Jamieson discusses these various develop-
ments in a roughly chronological order and in 
sufficient detail to give the background of each 
development. H e displays a nice style of w r i t -
ing and exhibits skill in presenting the com-
plicated organizational picture of the A r m y 
clearly. H e exercises r e s t r a i n t in discussing 
such imponderables as w h e t h e r soldiers' read-
ing tastes w e r e altered by w a r t i m e library 
service, and he views the record of achievement 
with a reasonably objective a t t i t u d e ( f o r ex-
ample, in recognizing t h a t some of the heavy 
use of A r m y libraries w a s due to the absence 
of other recreational facilities). T h e r e are a 
f e w blemishes, such as direct quotations f r o m 
unnamed sources, uncritical acceptance of 
testimony and some typographical e r r o r s ; 
but, so f a r as this reviewer is able to judge, 
the facts given are correct. 

T h i s is a good s u m m a r y and review of the 
operations of the A r m y L i b r a r y Service. As 
a technical report it could serve any country 

90 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



(and indeed the German Army Library Serv-
ice was similar in many ways to our o w n ) . 
As an historical review it does not treat of 
the solutions which might have been used. But 

as f a r as it goes, Books for the Army 
does well a job that needed to be done.— 
Herbert Goldhor, University of Illinois Li-
brary School. 

Books A b o u t Printing and Bookmaking 
Abriss der lateinischen Palaeographie. B y 

H a n s Foerster. Bern, Paul H a u p t , 1949, 
2i2p. Swiss F r a n k . $20.00. 

Maimer Probedrucke. E i n B e i t r a g z u r 
Gutenberg-Forschung. By Carl W e h m e r . 
Munich, Leibnis-Verlag, 1948, 6op., 12 
illus. $6.00. 

Gutenberg und der Weg des Abendlandes. 
By Konrad F. Bauer. F r a n k f u r t A. M . , 
Verlag der Goldene Brunnen, 1949, i8p. 

Typographic Heritage. Selected Essays by 
Lawrence C. W r o t h . N e w York, T h e 
Typophiles, 1949, i62p. (Typophile Chap-
book X X . ) 
T h e books selected here for review are 

each, in a different way, of interest to the 
scholarly librarian who likes to keep in-
formed of progress in the history of printing 
and bookmaking. 

T h e circle of men and women among li-
brarians interested in the development of 
handwriting and the deciphering of medieval 
texts is not a large one, but it exists. Its 
members will be glad to learn of the ap-
pearance of Professor H a n s Foerster's man-
ual of paleography. In several regards this 
is a modest work. T h e r e are no plates or 
text illustrations; they were left out with 
the deliberate intention of keeping the price 
down. Also, the author is modest in his own 
approach to the many debatable questions in 
the field of Latin paleography. On each of 
these questions he takes great pains to ac-
quaint the reader with every published opin-
ion by every authority of rank and caliber. 
I t cannot be said that this method promotes 
easy reading, and recognition of the bold out-
lines of evolution is not greatly facilitated 
thereby. But the presentation is a conscien-
tious and fair one which leads the reader into 
the very midst of the stream of discussion 
and analysis. T h e English and American lit-
erature, it should be added, is not as familiar 
to the author as the continental European 
one. T h e significant study of Felix Reich-
mann on the book in ancient Rome and the 
studies of Stanley Morison and of H . S. 

Steinberg on the late medieval writing master 
are not mentioned. 

T h e strength of H a n s Foerster's Abriss 
der lateinischen Palaeographie lies in t h e 
presentation of reasonably up-to-date knowl-
edge in skillful condensation. T h e history of 
paleography as a discipline, the contribution 
of the important masters of the field and 
their publications, the various materials and 
forms of the written record, notes on the 
scribe, on the medieval book trade and on li-
braries, together with the detailed analysis of 
the evolution of the Roman alphabet in its 
various forms, make this a worthwhile book 
to own and to study. 

D r . Carl W e h m e r ' s Maimer Probedrucke 
contains sensational revelations to everyone 
who has followed serious research on the ori-
gin of European printing with movable type. 
W e h m e r ' s study is based on the careful 
scrutiny of a small group of loose leaves, 
rescued from an unknown early binding, in 
the Jagellonian University Library in C r a -
cow, previously described inaccurately as 
"Donatus Fragments." Actually, the leaves 
turn out to be simultaneous trial impressions 
of three different publications, one indeed a 
Donatus, the other one a trial proof of the 
so-called Astronomical Calendar for 1448 
and the third a trial proof for a hitherto not 
recorded 40-line Bible project, all in the type, 
more or less, of the 36-line Bible. They are 
excellent, clean impressions, pulled on the 
loose pages of an old account book of a 
M a i n z cloth merchant of the latter four-
teenth century. C a r e f u l study of the type 
shows beyond doubt that the three projects 
f o r which these proofs were made were 
initiated a f t e r the securely dated " T u e r k e n -
bulle" of 1456. T h e seemingly unsurmounta-
ble difficulty which this discovery presents is 
the fact that the so-called Astronomical Cal-
endar for 1448 ( C W 1285) has been con-
sidered by its discoverer, Professor Zedler, 
and by every subsequent authority, as se-
curely dated—on astronomical evidence—for 
the year 1448. T h e r e f o r e , it has been al-

JANUARY, 1951 91