College and Research Libraries Librarians are indebted to him for he is a real propagandist for the profession. He as- sumes that librarians like books and like to read. This attitude is contagious, for nearly everyone likes reminiscenses from former li- brarians who guided parched and avid youth to succulent pasture. Librarians, booksellers, publishers, and patrons generally get this in- fection from these essays. The profession needs more who read and write as does Lawrence Powell.-Wyman W. Parker, W es- leyan University Library. Reference Books Guide to Reference Books (7th ed.) Third Supplement, 1956-1958. By Constance M. Winchell, assisted by John N. Waddell and Eleanor Buist. Chicago: American Li- brary Association, I 960. 145p. $3. 75. This supplement lists about 1,230 books and brings to approximately 8,930 the num- ber of reference works or different editions of those works included in the seventh edi- tion and its supplements. The third supple- ment lists mainly books published in the three years 1956 to 1958, but some publica- tions of 1955 and some received before March 31, 1959, have been included. Special emphasis has been given to Russian and East European materials, reflecting the current interest in the Slavic world. In many sec- tions, such as National Bibliography, Pe- riodicals, Literature, and History, the em- phasis on Russia, which seems to me justi- fied, is particularly obvious. Mudge-Winchell is a selective guide to reference books, and there is perhaps little point in cavilling at omissions or inclusions. It is nevertheless surprising to me that not a single !Jusiness service is listed (although a discussion of these important reference works is included and reference made to Hausdor- fer's guide) and that none of the increasingly important Annual Review or Advances in or Progress in series in the natural and physical sciences is mentioned. Although coverage in 500 science and technology and the social sci- ences has been notoriously weak in the Guide from its inception, yet one wonders why Nuclear Science Abstracts and Singer's History of Technology were omitted. There are some strange omissions in other fields, for example, Wallace's Dictionary of North American Authors Deceased before 1950 (1951) and Vance's Illustration Index (1956). I can see no reason for excluding Schmieder's Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums, a com- prehensive and excellent bibliography in a field in which bibliographies are sparse. Why is the Checklist of Hearings prepared by the Library of .Congress not included? The an- swers to these questions, I am sure, all go back to the same difficulty: there is no such thing as a complete bibliography or a book free from error. Most reference books of im- portance are included in Mudge-Winchell, and the Guide's entries are remarkably ac- curate. There are now three supplements to the seventh edition of Mudge-,V"inchell, and a fourth supplement is scheduled before a new eighth edition will be published. To find all the reference works listed in this invaluable guide, it is now necessary to consult four separate volumes; to purchase a set requires the outlay of $20.50 plus sales tax. The sup- plements already cost more than the original volume, and the complete set is priced be- yond the reach of most beginning librarians or library school students. At least one li- brary school has decided not to continue to require it as a text in reference courses be- cause it is becoming too cumbersome to use and more expensive as its usefulness as a text decreases. The annotations in the new sup- plement are as welcome when present and as uneven in helpfulness and as mysteriously absent frequently as in the previous volumes of the seventh edition. If there is one valid criticism of this work as a guide, it is that there should be an annotation for every work listed and that the annotations should be fuller. Every reference class I have taught has complained about Mudge-Winchell as a textbook for this reason. A proper guide to reference books should be completely anno- tated, no matter what the cost. Reference librarians will welcome this new supplement and will check their collections against it. If they have done a reasonably good job of current acquisition, they will COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES find few titles in the supplement that they do not already know about, for all the books included are at least a year old, and many of them were published more than three years ago. It is also possible to find in the new supplement new editions of reference books that have already been superseded by newer editions not mentioned in the supple- ment. Take, for example, Ulrich's Periodi- cals Directory, the eighth edition (1956) of which is listed in this new supplement. A new edition of Ulrich was published in 1959 and so, of course, was not included. The fact is that the supplements to the Guide are not published frequently enough to serve as use- ful selection guides for reference books. The articles "Selected Reference Books" by Miss Winchell published twice a year in this jour- nal do not completely solve this problem be- cause many libraries do not subscribe to CRL and many librarians are not aware of the existence of the articles. Could there not be a reference in the supplements to these very helpful CRL lists? It seems to me that reference books are an important enough category of library materials so that an an- nual cumulating supplement to the Mudge- vVinchell Guide should be produced to aid refernce librarians in their unending strug- gle to keep their collections up-to-date. We should not have to wait four years for as important an aid to better library service as this new supplement.-Fredric ]. Mosher, School of Librarianship, University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley. Materials for Junior College Libraries Reference Books, compiled by Louis Shores. (Basic Materials for Florida Junior Col- lege Libraries: Materials Bulletin 22CJC- 1). Tallahassee: Florida State Department of Education, 1960. 22p. $1.00. Magazines, compiled by Dorothy May Poteat (Basic Materials for Florida Junior Col- lege Libraries: Materials Bulletin 22CJC- 2). Tallahassee: Florida State Department of Education, 1960. 40p. $1.00. NOVEMBER 1960 These two mimeographed publications are the beginning of a series of six presently pro- jected under the sponsorship of the Division of Community Junior Colleges of the Florida State Department of Education and the Li- brary School of Florida State University. They are designed to provide convenient up- to-date materials lists for Florida's rapidly developing junior college libraries. Other items in the series are to include books in the fields of Science, English language and Literature, History, and Biography and Geography; and Audio-Visual Materials and Equipment. The lists are being prepared initially by graduate students in the Library School at Florida State University, after which each is circulated among junior col- lege librarians and faculty members both in Florida and beyond, and the final draft is compiled on the basis of the pooled judg- ment of the respondents. At this distance there is no reason to quar- rel with any of the titles included, nor any basis to quibble with any ·titles which have been excluded, for the lists are prepared with the needs of Florida junior college cur- ricula clearly in mind. To engage in a study of these curricula in order properly to eval- uate the titles on the list is clearly above and beyond the call of duty for one brief review. The titles are all good ones, as one would expect in publications appearing under the general editorship of Louis Shores and Sarah Reed, and would certainly have to be con- sidered for inclusion in any junior college library anywhere. If one could be sure that these lists would be used only in this way, as a list of sugges- tions for consideration by librarian and fac- ulty in each junior college, .their claim to fame or at least existence would be secure. However, one necessarily harbors the sus- picion that they will be used not as buying guides only, but as order lists, and that the books and magazines will be added into junior college libraries in Florida and else- where without any consideration on the part of the librarian and faculty as to their suit- ability, and without either librarians or fac- ulty having engaged in the intellectual ex- ercise of determining whether or not these books are indeed the ones which ought to be in their particular library. As things now stand, the student compilers of the lists have gained much in the way of selection practice 501