College and Research Libraries integration" of instruction in A-V materials and their use in the basic courses. Details on several excellent library school A-V programs provide a clear picture of the desirable cur- ricular structure for A-V instruction: a strong audio-visual course structure plus a highly integrated instruction in A-V materials, their organization and use, throughout the library school curriculum. All this serves, in a sense, as preface to the full description of how this was achieved in the program at the School of Librarianship, University of California, as de- veloped by Dr. Lieberman. The details of cur- riculum, the program of in-service workshops for practicing librarians, and the wealth of classroom projects and materials included in the appendix of the report—all provide a sound picture of a full A-V program in li- brary education. While recognizing the reluctance of a seg- ment of the library profession to assume re- sponsibilities in the uncharted waters of A-V, Dr. Lieberman's basic philosophy for academ- ic, public, and school libraries includes as essential the responsibility for acquiring, or- ganizing, administering, and stimulating use of all materials that record man's thought. He asks librarians to accept A-V materials as "normal" and to train library school students to provide and use them with an ease equal to that with which they serve readers with books. This study cannot, of course, provide final answers to many of the problems for which it proposes tentative solutions. But the wealth of suggestion for library education and the broad picture of current A-V practice in pub- lic, school, and academic libraries makes this a valuable report for us now.—Margaret E. Monroe, Graduate School of Library Service, Rutgers University. Microrecording Microrecording: Industrial and Library Ap- plications. By Chester M. Lewis and Wil- liam H. Offenhauser. New York: Inter- science Publishers [1956]. 456p. $8.50. It is now almost fifteen years since Herman H. Fussler's Photographic Reproduction for Libraries was published. A lot has been writ- ten about microphotography in that period, but most of this has appeared as short articles in a widely scattered body of literature. It is high time that a book appeared which would try to pull together much of the information published since 1942. This volume by Chester Lewis, chief librarian of the New York Times and past president of the Special Libraries Association, and William Offenhauser, con- sultant on photography and author of 16 mm Sound Motion Pictures, is such an attempt. Whereas Fussler's book is frankly aimed at administrative librarians, this volume is di- rected primarily towards industrial users and only secondarily towards librarians. The first two chapters deal with the in- creasingly important problem of record re- tention. Libraries share with business and in- dustry the threat of being smothered in a flood of paper records. After considering the business and legal requirements for record retention, the authors propose microrecord- ing as one possible solution to the problem, realizing that it is not the only answer, and suggesting criteria for its choice. Then follow a review of the various forms which micro- records have taken and a table of costs of microfilming operations. The chapters following cover the materials and equipment for microrecording. These in- clude: film, cameras, processing, projection, enlargement and reading machines. There are a number of tables listing the equipment available at the time this book went to press. These are as complete as is possible with such a changeable subject. Generally speaking, these tables are perhaps a little easier to un- derstand than those found in the F.I.D. Manual on Document Reproduction and Se- lection, though they do not have the possi- bility for frequent revision and supplementa- tion of that publication. The last two chapters deal with informa- tion classification and retrieval by micropho- tography, and with storage. There are many illustrations throughout the book and numer- ous instances where pertinent information has been abstracted and reprinted from other publications. Bibliographies follow each chapter. These could have been arranged a little better, and some items seem to have been pulled in without much thought of their relevance. The appendices to this volume are worth the price of the whole publication. The first deals with recommendations for record re- tention and the legality of microfilmed rec- 522 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ords. Then follow some thirty A.S.A. stand- ards which have a bearing on the photo- graphic aspects of microrecording. The final section covers microfilming services, listing both commercial agencies and research li- braries with photoduplication facilities. This book suffers somewhat from being written by two authors. There is considerable duplication between chapters and a certain roughness in transition of style from one chapter to the next. There are numerous ex- amples of careless editing. T w o chosen at random are: (1) On page 161 the Leica cam- era is described as being produced in East Germany, and on page 280 it is correctly lo- cated in West Germany. (2) On page 247 (in the text) the Griscombe Portable Reader is priced at $150, and on page 265 (in the table of equipment) it is correctly listed at $165. Though a careful consideration is given to the distinction between primary preserva- tion (storage and preservation of the origi- nal) and secondary preservation (by fac- simile, such as microrecording), there are a number of cases where secondary material is cited in footnotes where it would have been just as easy to give primary references. These are perhaps minor criticisms, as they can easily be corrected in another edition of this book. All in all, a volume such as this one is needed. It will fill a definite space on the reference shelf of any library engaged in extensive handling of microrecords. It will certainly not supplant, but it will assuredly supplement Fussler's classic in this field.— Hubbard W. Ballon, Columbia University Libraries. American Book Binding Kurze Geschichte der Handbuchbinderei in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, von Lawrence S. Thompson. Stuttgart, Max Hettler Verlag [1955]. 44p., 32 plates with 51 illus. 12 DM. Lawrence S. Thompson, director of librar- ies of the University of Kentucky, is well known in this country for his contacts with foreign librarians and bibliographers and his translations of their writings, as well as for his interest in bookbinding. Now the tables are turned, and his own short treatise on American binding has been put into German by Max Hettler, under the auspices of G. A. E. Bogeng, editor of the series (Meister und Meisterwerke der Buchbinderkunst) of which this is the third number. This compact account of the craft of bind- ing in the United States duplicates essentially the author's article in English in Libri: In- ternational Library Review, V (1954), but it lacks the footnotes of the English version. It begins with a useful resum£, based chiefly on Hannah French's essay Early American Book- binding by Hand (1941), covering the Colon- ial Period and the young republic to 1820. Information for more recent times has been for the most part obtainable by searching through ephemeral material, much of it un- critical, in periodicals, newspapers and simi- lar sources, and it is a real service to students of binding history to have it sorted out and definitely cited. In the early decades of the nineteenth cen- tury, when mechanical processes of book pro- duction were developing, binding deterio- rated in both quality and artistry. The Scotch- born William Matthews, whom Mr. Thomp- son calls the first great American binder, was largely responsible from mid-century onward for keeping up the standards of the craft. In 1895 with a group of distinguished book col- lectors he founded the famous Club Bindery, of which a study by Elbert A. Thompson was issued on microcards in 1954 by the Uni- versity of Rochester Press. This bindery gave employment to a remarkably skillful staff of craftsmen from abroad. Indeed the influx of foreigners after the Civil War is one of the significant features of the development of fine binding, and their names illumine any account of it in this country from mid- century to the present day. They came from the British Isles, Germany, France, even Bo- hemia, and work awaited them in the li- braries of the great book collectors who were in their element around the turn of the cen- tury. Moreover the book clubs organized by these collectors, for example the Grolier Club in New York, had work to be done. Eventu- ally there was opportunity in rare book li- braries, such as the Morgan Library, in uni- versity and public libraries which had rare book departments, and in a few forward- looking publishing firms, for instance the Lakeside Press in Chicago. There seemed no limit to the demand from patrons who could NOVEMBER, 1956 523