College and Research Libraries


Review Articles 

Important Memoirs 
Mitchell of California: The Memoirs of Syd-

ney B. Mitchell, Librarian, Teacher, Gard-
ener, with a preface by Lawrence Clark 
Powell; Berkeley, California Library As-
sociation, 1960. Illus. 263 p. $5.00. 

At one point (p. 178) Sydney Mitchell 
writes, "Since my eighteenth year I have 
spent my life in universities. I have been on 
the staff of four of these. I have taught in 
summer schools at others, have been a visit-
ing fellow at still another, and in my inves-
tigations of library service, I have been for 
a longer or shorter time at two or three 
dozen more." Certainly he got about and, 
as a consequence, flung high a constellation 
of students who continue to shine and 
twinkle in the firmament. 

These reminiscences are his response to 
their devoted insistence. He never found 
time to finish them; formally they break 
off with an account of the early years of his 
Berkeley experience, but that interruption 
is gently compensated for by an appended 
interview which he gave to Neal Harlow and 
Andrew Horn at Grizzly Peak on a Feb-
ruary afternoon in 1950. Cora R. Brandt has 
added an account of his horticultural ac-
complishments; Betty Rosenberg has com-
piled an admirable bibliography, Lawrence 
Clark Powell has contributed the explana-
tory preface. 

From these pages emerges with extraordi-
nary fullness the story of a man who, in his 
youth, "never . . . met a real librarian," who 
began his career at the paltry salary of 
twenty dollars a month, and who neverthe-
less came to exert (the words are Dean 
Powell's) "more influence in western library 
work than any person since James L. Gillis." 
There are nostalgic, evocative chapters on 
the Montreal of his youth, on McGill Uni-
versity in the Stephen Leacock period, on 
the milieu and minions of the library school 
at Albany, on Stanford in the days when 
President Jordan played first base on the 
faculty team, on the shaping of a Califor-
nian. 

And there is Edmund Lester Pearson's 

prescription for a perfect charging system: 
"Attendant picks reader's pocket, stamps on 
reader's foot, and files reader's teeth." 

Mitchell was a great innovator, unafraid 
of change, unawed by the dicta and the cher-
ished practices and the petty pretension of 
his elders, indifferent to tradition, always 
eager to grow with the growing world 
around him. But he was without malice; the 
only hatred he betrayed was directed toward 
accession books! He was a magnificent 
teacher and this was, perhaps, because he 
was first and unwaveringly a magnificent 
human being. His memoirs are important 
for this reason and for the more obvious 
reason that they are inseparably a part of 
the history of education for librarianship.— 
David C. Mearns, Library of Congress. 

Classification Schemes 
Guide to the SLA Loan Collection of Classic 

fication Schemes and Subject Heading 
Lists on Deposit at Western Reserve Uni-
versity as of March 20, 1961. Compiled by 
Bertha R. Barden and Barbara Denison. 
5th ed. (New York: Special Libraries As-
sociation, 1961.) 97p. $4.00. 

In our data-packed, highly specialized so-
ciety, the organization of information into 
manageable form presents a problem not 
only to libraries, but also to advertising 
agencies, textile manufacturers, banks, and 
sugar planters—to name just a few. T h e sys-
tem devised by one group to control its ma-
terial may solve the problem of another. 
Since 1924, the Special Classifications Com-
mittee of SLA has conducted a "share-the-
wealth" program for such systems by build-
ing a collection of classification schemes and 
subject heading lists through contributions 
from SLA Divisions, ASLIB, UNESCO, and 
many special, university, and public libraries 
throughout the world. 

T h e present edition of the Guide to the 
collection describes 788 classification schemes 
and other systems for the organization of 
special collections, 210 more than were listed 

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