College and Research Libraries


range, university adult education can play 
a meaningful role only by rigorously defin-
ing its distinctive place, by setting a limit 
to the tasks that it will undertake and an 
order of priority among them." (page 129). 

University administrators, working with 
the National University Extension Associa-
tion, face some difficult decisions as adult 
educational needs continue to multiply. If 
the decision is to concentrate university adult 
education programs at the "college level" 
(and financial support may dictate this de-
cision in view of the special function of uni-
versities in the field of higher education) 
then the public library, as "the people's uni-
versity," undoubtedly will be expected to 
assume, with other agencies, major respon-
sibility for adult education. T h e role of the 
universities, other than university adult edu-
cation as defined by the Petersens, may well 
be limited to assisting and nurturing other 
agencies through leadership training, prep-
aration and dissemination of educational ma-
terials, applied research, and consultation. 

" F o r a richer, fuller life, wake up and 
read" is a fine slogan for a National Li-
brary Week. T h e Petersens' book is the kind 
of reading that should "wake up" librarians 
to the kinds of problems and decisions they 
may be facing soon in the field of adult edu-
cation.—Eugene H. Wilson, University of 
Colorado. 

Fifty Years Old 
Search and Research; the Collections and 

Uses of the New York Public Library at 
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. By William 
K. Zinaser. New York: T h e New York 
Public Library, 1961. 46p. $1.00 paper, 
$3.00 bound. 

Written and published to mark the fif-
tieth anniversary of the New York Public 
Library, this handsome little book is ad-
dressed to a wide lay audience, and exem-
plifies the best sort of public-relations 
pamphleteering. Necessarily superficial, be-
cause it covers a vast subject in small com-
pass, with reliance on anecdote and vignette 
to suggest complexity rather than on ex-
haustive description which might be more 
accurate if more dull, it nevertheless con-
tains little tidbits of information interesting 
to even the most blase librarian already con-
vinced that here is one of the very greatest 
libraries of the world. If a fault must be 
found, it may lie in the fact that nowhere 
in this work, or in other anniversary litera-
ture this reviewer has seen, has it seemed 
pertinent to mention the name and identify 
the contribution of John Shaw Billings, the 
library's great founder.—Frank B. Rogers, 
National Library of Medicine. 

African, Chinese Sources 
• 

A new bibliographical guide listing more than two thousand titles of periodical publica-
tions concerned with Africa has just been published by the Library of Congress. Entitled 
Serials for African Studies (1961, 163 p.), it was compiled by Helen F. Conover of the Li-
brary's Africana Section. 

T h e serial titles listed in the new guide represent institutional serials—such as journals, 
annual reports, and memoirs—as well as independent magazines published in Africa and 
abroad. T h e list is based on the library's earlier Research and Information on Africa, Con-
tinuing Sources (1954), but—unlike it—includes a variety of ephemeral publications in 
Western and African languages, processed newsletters and bulletins of current information, 
and missionary journals and magazines, which, although not devoted exclusively to Afri-
can affairs, carry articles on Africa frequently enough to be of value for research. 

T h e entries include information on holdings in the Library of Congress or other Amer-
ican libraries, addresses of publishers not readily available, and, in some cases, notes de-
scribing content. 

T h e publication is for sale by the Government Printing Office at $f.00 a copy. 

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