College and Research Libraries existing facilities and the future needs for health services for the people of Canada." It was sponsored by the Committee on Med- ical Science Libraries of the Canadian Li- brary Association-Association Canadienne des Bibliotheques and the Association of Canadian Medical Colleges/ L' Association des Facultes de Medecine du Canada. The terms of reference for the survey were: to ascertain and assess the resources of the twelve medical school libraries and to offer suggestions for their improvement and development within a coordinated na- tionwide plan for a biomedical information service. Miss Simon conducted the survey during the spring and summer of 1962. A questionnaire followed by a visit to each medical school was the method used to ob- tain the information. While the answers to the questionnaire were prepared by the medical librarians, some seventy-three inter- views were held, including those with uni- versity presidents, deans of the medical schools, chief librarians of the universities, and heads of departments in the medical schools. The results of the survey are analyzed under four main headings: ( 1) library needs for medical education and research; (2) library collections and services; ( 3) the organization pf medical library service; and ( 4) a nationwide program for Canada. Al- though each of these headings has a num- ber of subheadings, the lack of an index is a disadvantage. In addition to the analysis there is a summary of conclusions, a sum- mary of proposals, and an estimate of costs for a five-year program. A copy of the ques- tionnaire and statistical results are contained in an appendix. The proposals for a nationwide program for improving access to the resources of medical literature in Canada include: ( 1) the establishment of a National Medical Bibliographic Centre and Information Ser- vice; ( 2) a program of financial aid to medical school libraries to enable them t<)_ bring their collections up to recognized standards; ( 3) the establishment and main- tenance of an auxiliary provincewide library service for the continuing education pro- grams; ( 4) the setting-up, in all teaching hospitals, of medical libraries which meet professional library standards; ( 5) the set- ting-up of a program for the training of Book Reviews I 251 medical science libr-arians at an accredited Canadian library school. The survey shows that the collections of medical literature in Canada are to be found chiefly in the medical school libraries. Thus the publication of the survey not only adds a valuable document to the literature on medical education but presents the first comprehensive survey of the medical library resources of a nation. Even though it por- trays the Canadian scene, the survey will be valuable for other countries whose medical school libraries are faced with expanding re- search programs, continuing education pro- grams, lack of supporting libraries in teach- ing hospitals, and the new interdisciplinary teaching programs.-OZga B. Bishop, Uni- versity of Western Ontario. The Heritage of the English Library. By Raymond Irwin. New York: Hafner Pub- lishing Co., 1964. 296p. $5.50 (64- 54587). In this thoroughly delightful volume the author, who is director of the school of li- brarianship and archives at University Col- lege, London, continues the research he be- gan with his The Origins of the English Library, published in 1958. He has :Bung his net wide and made a good catch, although it is remarkable that by the time he has reached half of the fourteen-chapter book he is only beginning a discussion of Cassio- dorus Senator and his Vivarium (fifth cen- tury A.D. ) . The volume is not strictly a history of English libraries, but neither is writing one Professor Irwin's expressed in- tention. What he has accomplished instead is a very readable, brightly written account of how libraries and collections of books started in Western Europe and what they contributed to culture from the time of the Greeks and Romans to the eighteenth cen- tury, when the habit of reading took firm root. (It will be noticed that very little is said about the nineteenth century or there- after.) From the offset we are shown the essen- tial need for paying attention to background in the study of the history of libraries. There follows a brief but meaningful discussion of five influential factors in the establishment of libraries: the economic, the literary, the social, the book trade, and the evidence of research. On the last point the author sin- 252 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1965 gles out as clear examples Pliny's .. His to ria Naturalis" and the great Byzantine Souda (or Suidas lexicon) . He adopts the term .. golden chain" to embody the links that have passed on great scholarship and tra- ditions down to the present day, i.e. , ... .. golden chain of written record" (p.26). In his chapter on Hellas he speculates on sev- eral reasons which may account for the no- ticeable lack of information about private libraries in Greece as compared with those of Rome. At the conclusion of his succinct history of Roman public libraries he poses a provocative query: what would have hap- pened had Ovid not been sent into exile by Augustus but made head of the Palatine li- brary instead? Chapter VI, .. Classical Bib- liography," with its handy compendium of informative data on such details as writing implements, papyrus, parchment, and in- dexes, is a good filler-in for the background to the picture Sir Frederick Kenyon has al- ready depicted in his Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome. Other topics in- clude: religious life and learning (a very fertile field-.. the special character of Chris- tianity involved an immediate interest in books, and therefore in libraries," p.21); the Oxford Greyfriars and S. Robert of Lincoln; Richard de Bury and his Philobiblon; parish libraries; and at the end a delightful little chapter on _.The Study and the Sofa"-a capsule word portrait of _.the social and do- mestic circumstances under which reading is done" (p.262). The list of sources is im- pressive; however, I miss a reference to Edward A. Parsons's The Alexandrian Li- brary; and George Haven Putnam's Authors and Their Public in Ancient Times, though a trifle antiquated, is still interesting read- ing. There are misprints in the Greek and accents are occasionally butchered, but, all in all, this is a highly intelligent text with a wealth of information which spills over even into the footnotes. The book certainly points up the need for more research in this lucra- tive field.-Francis D. Lazenby, University of Notre Dame. Guardians of Tradition: American School- books of the Nineteenth Century. By Ruth Miller Elson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. 424p. $7. (64- 17219). To what extent is an individual influenced by his reading? Librarians and educationists have pondered this question variously. In Molders of the Modern Mind, for example, Librarian Robert Downs described 111 books that, in his opinion, had shaped West- ern civilization. The late, deep-thinking edu- cational philosopher, Michael Demiashkev- ich, in his The National Mind, analyzed the cultural influences, including literature, that influenced the English, French, and German mentalities. But the ·present approach is a more basic one-to the ideas held by the or- dinary man, and it is made through an analysis of a thousand or more schoolbooks to which the nineteenth-century American was exposed. Because there was no competition from television, movies, and the countless recre- ations that confront today's children, school- books undoubtedly influenced last century's Americans considerably. Furthermore, since libraries were almost nonexistent in schools there was no possibility of dispersal through reserve reading. Finally, the accent on memorization reinforced by the monitorial system and catechism-type learning guar- anteed schoolbook influence beyond any- thing today, at least for those who attended school at all. From ·their readers, spellers, grammars, arithmetics, and later, geographies and his- tories, our grand- and great-grandparents learned reading, writing and arithmetic, of course. But they gathered other things also, because textbook writers of the nineteenth century .. were much more concerned with the child's moral development than with the development of his mind." Noah Webster prefaced his 1789 textbook with the purpose .. to diffuse the principles of virtue and pa- triotism." From Dr. Elson's absorbing analysis it is apparent that idealism dominated realism in last century's schoolbooks. In the study of nature, God's creation was nobly reconciled with biologists' evolution. Virtue was almost always rewarded and vice punished. Ameri- cans were God's latest .. chosen people." Other nations were something less. The English were good because they were our parents and their literature was the greatest. But the English were monstrous and cruel in the American Revolution. Other nations ranked below, with various characteriza- tions. The Germans, on the whole, received the next most favorable treatment. Except ' \ 1'