College and Research Libraries scriptions are records of political and social events or legal documents. Stone, which suc- ceeded bronze, was used primarily to insure preservation of canonical Confucian, Bud- dhist, and Taoist texts. Jade, clay, and other metals besides bronze were also inscribed. The earliest Chinese books were made of strips and tablets of wood and bamboo tied together by two cords. No examples survive before the fifth or sixth century B.C. although ancient literature records that book produc- tion flourished several centuries earlier. Books were also made of silk and, of course, paper following its invention by the Chinese in the second century. The invention of paper, the various kinds of paper and their methods of manufacture are well covered, but the finished product, the book, is treated very scantily, apart from the question of format. Mr. Tsien does not tell us about the size of editions, the means of their production, book distribution, the concept of authorship, and other such mat- ters of interest to librarians. This volume in the University of Chicago Studies in Library Science is of interest, therefore, primarily to archaeologists and students of Chinese civilization. Perhaps in a future volume in this series Mr. Tsien will write a work on the early history of the book in China as exhaustive as this is on early Chinese in- scriptions and book materials.-Kenneth E. Carpenter, Bowdoin College Library. Russian Librarianship Technical Information in the U.S.S.R. By Aram S. Melik-Shakhnazarov. Translated by Boris I. Gorokhoff. Bibliographic Prob- lems in the Natural Sciences; Reports De- livered at the VI Scientific Conference of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leningrad, March 2-4, 1960. Translated by Adam Hakane. (Massachu- setts Institute of Technology Libraries. Li- brary Monographs Nos. 3 & 4). Cam- bridge: Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology Libraries, 1961, 1962. 122, ll3p. $1.60, $2.88 (paper) . It is refreshing to a librarian to find Rus- sian books on librarianship or related sub- jects translated into English. This treatment of technical literature is common enough in chemistry, physics, or aeronautics, but prac- JANUARY 1963 tically unheard of in the library field. Our knowledge of Soviet libraries and library techniques has in the past come from re- ports of touring librarians or from surveys by experts such as Horecky or Gorokhoff. If the trend set by the two books reviewed here continues, we may expect someday to have cover-to-cover translations of Bibliotekaf and Sovetskaia Bibliografiia. MIT has sponsored two works quite differ- ent from each other yet fascinating in what they both reveal of institutions, people, methods, and attitudes in Soviet librarian- ship. One book is a manual written for the guidance of information personnel in Soviet industry. The other is a collection of papers delivered at a nationally important confer- ence attended by 170 scientists and librari- ans. Technical Information in the U.S.S.R. is the manual for industrial information work- ers. As might be expected from the compe- tence he displayed in his own book, Publish- ing in the U.S.S.R., Boris I. Gorokhoff makes a good translator in this subject field. In the first half of his book, Melik-Shakhnazarov identifies and describes the major informa- tion agencies and bibliographic sources of importance to the Soviet technical librarian. This is a clear, concise presentation which will no doubt become a handy and valu- able reference for some American librarians. The second half of the book outlines the duties and techniques of Soviet information specialists in the dissemination of technical information. Much of this will seem familiar to American special librarians, but, to a de- gree unknown in this country, the Soviet li- brarian must play a large role in promoting new industrial techniques, popularizing sci- ence, stimulating production-line morale, in- troducing new standards, and achieving pro- duction goals. The Soviet industrial librari- an's teaching, promotion, and oral-commu- nication responsibilities make him an active organizer of such strange-sounding activities as special days for innovators, assistance to lagging brigades, planning for multiskill bri- gades, and workers' excursions to other plants. A final brief chapter looks wistfully to the prospects of greater mechanization in information work. There are eight supple- ments of varying interest. Bibliographic / Problems in the Natural Sciences contains six papers delivered by 75 prominent library and bibliographic special- ists at the 1960 annual Scientific Conference of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences library. All of them deal with some aspect of an ac- tivity taken very seriously in the Soviet Union, the systematic and nationally coordi- nated compilation of broad subject bibliogra- phies. S. P. Luppov, director of the Scientific Bibliographic Section of the Academy of Sci- ences library, was the conference keynoter; he defined the problems, suggested insti- tutional roles in a national bibliographic plan, listed major bibliographies already published or in preparation, and discussed some technical difficulties. The second and third speakers spoke in behalf of the two largest Soviet bibliographic agencies- VINITI, famous as the publisher of Refera- tivny'i Zhurnal, and the All-Union Book Chamber, producer of Knizhnaia Letopis and other Soviet national bibliographies- and defended the policies of these agencies affecting the bibliographic work of scientists and librarians. The fourth and fifth speakers dealt respectively with non-Soviet bibliogra- phy and with bibliographies of bibliogra- phies; the sixth told how the All-Union Geo- logical library went about improving its an- nual bibliography, Geologicheskaia Litera- lura SSSR. The six papers were followed by an inter- esting discussion and by a resolution pro- posing next steps toward complete subject bibliography. The discussion was spirited. It is apparent that while Soviet librarians, like other Soviet citizens, may refrain from criti- cizing the government or Party, they do freely criticize 'the ideas of fellow bureau- crats and complain of the policies of specific government agencies. Even the Referativny'i Zhurnal and the registration lists of the Book Chamber, which, in general, they re·- gard as the best publications of their kind in the world, were criticized · fOr inconvenient presentation, inadequate indexing, omissions in coverage, and nonstandard bibliographic form. It is some comfort to an American who has wrestled with these services to learn that the Russians also find them inconvenient to use. Other difficulties which the bibliographers felt stood between them and their remote, elusive goal were lack of agreement on standards for entry, lack of a common classi- fication scheme; - difficulty in getting bibli- ographies published, and insufficient plan- ning. The greatest planning deficiency was in the assigrim~nt of subject responsibilities to individual libraries. It was obvious, from the discussions,' that the librarians from the peripheral union republics, except perhaps the Ukrainians, felt neglected in the general planning 'and were sadly aware that inade- quate staffs and collections made full part- nership with the Moscow and Leningrad li- braries impracticable. Both books reveal pride in what Soviet librarians regard as great Soviet bibliograph- ic achievements, especially in the Refer- ativny'i Zhurnal and in the registration pro- grams of the All-Union Book Chamber. They also indicate a general awareness and appre- ciation of foreign scientific and technical literature and bibliography and of foreign library activities; there are occasional favor- able comments on various programs of the Library of Congress, Council on Library Re- sources, International Federation of Library Associations, and International Federation for Documentation. In both books librarians speak hopefully of the future when mechani- zation will be a reality, but at present there appears to be little progress in this direction. There are some technical points which should be made. The two translators have chosen different solutions to some of the problems which inevitably arise in trans- lating from Russian and other languages less well-known than, say, French or German. Hakane has translated the names of all pub- lications into English, whereas Gorokhoff us~­ ally provides both English and transliter- ated Russian; Gorokhoff's procedure is less ambiguous and facilitates bibliographic fol- low-up. Hakane provides footnotes through- out but has consistently given all titles in English only. Gorokhoff decided, perhaps for good reason, not to include the author's foot- notes; at least one instance was noted, how- ever, in which a footnote would have helped to follow up on a reference contained in the text. Gorokhoff does provide helpful trans- lator's footnotes, usually explaining or de- fining some unusual feature of Soviet in- dustrial life. Finally, Hakane's obvious com- petence as a transl~tor seems flawed by his unfamiliarity with American library terms: there are several references to the "ten-fold" classification system and two to the "Union 76 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES of Library Resources." It was hard to tell if some of the more difficult sections of his book gave trouble because of strange Rus- sian concepts of bibliography or because of this characteristic of the translation. Both translators, however, for all these small points, are to be congratulated for effective pieces of work. The Russian authors in these books are, perhaps properly, very serious; and there are no humorous or light touches to relieve this seriousness. Horecky and Gorokhoff, in the books they wrote on similar subjects, man- aged to give much livelier presentations than Melik-Shakhnazarov and the other Russian authors have done. The MIT libraries are to be commended for giving American librarians an opportu- nity to learn more about the Soviet library world. For librarians concerned with science bibliography, industrial librarianship, or So- viet publications and librarianship these books should make interesting and profitable reading.-Dale L. Barker, Georgia Institute of Technolog-y Library. International Classification Rider's International Classification for the Arrangement of Books on the Shelves of General Libraries. By Fremont Rider. Pre- liminary ed. Mid(lletown , Conn.: The Au- thor, 1961. ll73p. $ 15.50. "This new International Classification is not intended for special libraries of any sort. It has been compiled solely for the shelving of books for general libraries, (i.e. public libraries, college libraries, and school librar- ies) ." This sentence opens a brief "Prelimi- nary Explanation" concerning the Interna- tional Classification. Rider also states that an aim is to develop a short and simple nota- tion, but he points out that despite the shortness and simplicity, the sixteen thou- sand subheads included "will be found ade- quate to take care of any general library having holdings of up to a million volumes." He writes further: "The result has been at- tained solely by making every endeavor to spread its load evenly, without national, linguistic, or religious biases over its 26 Classes and 676 Sub-classes." There is a de- liberate avoidance of all subsidiary tables and JANUARY 1963 "divide-likes," in order to make application of the system easier for the classifier. In the purpose and the programing of this classification, Rider has been seeking the ideal classification for his particular groups of libraries. He uses all the letters of the alphabet, and there are considerable resem- blances to both the Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress systems in the order of the main classes. The subclasses have three letters as a maximum, (e.g. "A" is Generalia, "AA" is Book Arts. Authorship, and "AAA" is the Art of Authorship). Dr. Rider is not inviting librarians to re- classify their collections to this system, he professes in the preface to this work. Indeed, he is suspicious of reclassification in terms of costs. New libraries or old collections that are not classified might want to introduce this classification, he suggests. The present reviewer is willing to await the comments of foreign librarians as to whether or not this is a suitable classifica- tion for the arrangement of materials in their libraries. As one who has been inter- ested in centralized classification to enable librarians to process materials as effectively as possible, within the limitations of eco- nomic support, the idea of a universal clas- sification is an appealing one. One does not have to recite in detail the objections that one might have to the new classification, even for new American libraries or for col- lections which have not been classified. The history of classification has been quite re- vealing in the array of corpses of schemes de- vised by individuals. At this point in the de- velopment of libraries, it would appear that an American college or university library might do much better in the use of the Dewey or the Library of Congress schedules, both supported by national programs to keep them up to date and to provide guid- ance in their use. There is little promise, it seems to this reviewer, that the Rider International Clas- sification will be actually applied in libraries. The Bliss Classification, which has been used by foreign librarians, sought some of the goals that Rider has been concerned with in th.e development of a universal classification, and has had acceptance on the basis of being less "American" than Dewey or LC. It would appear that Rider has done a useful service in showing what "a classifi- 77