College and Research Libraries


446 / College 6- Research Libraries • September 1968 

presents many of the numerous sources of 
information outside the immediate library 
collections which are available to British 
industry, and which are often overlooked. 
Descriptions of these sources comprise the 
major part of the lectures. There is an ex-
cellent brief description of the British pat-
ent system by F. Newby. Other lectures 
describe the public technical library serv-
ices, commercial information sources, the 
organization and problems associated with 
the technical report literature, and special 
library cooperation in Britain. The last lec-
ture, by B. C. Vickery, is an interesting 
introduction to the problems of organizing 
an information file. These problems could 
well be the subject of the next short course, 
if one is planned. 

Since the sources cited are primarily 
British, the usefulness of this book is some-
what limited for American industrial infor-
mation workers. However, within the 
stated objectives of the course—that is, as 
an introduction to British industrial infor-
mation work—it fills the need for informa-
tion at this level.—Ted Srygley, University 
of Florida. 

Health Sciences Librarianship. By Irving 
Lieberman. Seattle: University of Wash-
ington Press, 1967. xii, 216p. 
To many medical librarians the estab-

lished pattern of medical education seems 
to be one which library education might 
profitably follow. The characteristics of this 
pattern are that the teaching is done by 
practitioners of the art, and an internship 
follows to consolidate the teaching. With 
such a model constantly before them, it is 
not surprising that the medical librarians at 
an invitational conference on education for 
health sciences librarianship held in Seattle 
in September 1967 should find themselves 
pulling in a different direction from the 
library educators. Predictably, the special-
ist librarians were concerned with cutting 
out the inessentials to get to the vital con-
cern of specialized education, while the 
generalists inclined to the superimposing 
of specialized information onto a core com-
mon to all library training. Amicability 
seems to have prevailed, perhaps unfor-
tunately. Participation was no doubt a sal-

utary experience but the published report 
includes little that is new except turns of 
phrase, and will hardly serve, as its editor 
hoped, as "a framework which any graduate 
library school might use in developing a 
program for health sciences librarianship." 

Dr. Brodman trenchantly states the need 
for all librarians to develop their own 
interface with the machine. Dr. Kronick 
jovially implies that the whole thing may 
be premature because there is insufficient 
data about the nature of the work to be 
done in medical libraries. Dr. Bodemer cor-
rectly indicates that the history of medi-
cine is one of several developing "social 
science" areas which will result in increasing 
demand on medical libraries from people 
outside the medical community, but he 
probably exaggerates the importance of 
medical history in the total picture. Dr. 
Pings hints at the great gap between theo-
rizing and doing in library education when 
he says that the library school is presently 
the only institution that has the facility to 
sponsor and develop new hospital health 
science educational programs. (That will 
be the day.) 

The present state of medical library edu-
cational programs is fairly well documented 
in the proceedings. The conclusions of the 
meeting, such as they were, are adequately 
summed up by Dr. Lieberman, and some 
gratuitous bulk is added by the inclusion of 
twenty-two pages of biographies of the 
participants.—G. S. T. Cavanaugh, Duke 
University. 

Progress of Libraries in Free India; Be-
ing a Symposium on Library Science 
by Some Eminent and Experienced Li-
brarians of India. E d . b y N . B . S e n . 
New Delhi: New Book Society of India, 
1967. 247p. $6. 
This compilation is similar to the edi-

tor's Development of Libraries in New In-
dia, which was published in 1965. It con-
sists of twenty-eight articles on a variety of 
topics related to libraries and librarianship 
in India. Most of the articles are by Indian 
librarians and teachers of library science 
who are well known and highly regarded 
in India, with a few articles by non-librar-
ians also included. Unfortunately, the edi-
tor has not organized the material in any