College and Research Libraries


204 I College & Research Libraries • May 1970 

zens will benefit enormously. Every city 
can and should have such a library as Dr. 
Martin envisions for Chicago, a "nerve 
center ... for contemporary information, 
in substance functioning as th~ fact bank, 
information switchboard, and special li­
brary for the general populace."-Edwin 
Castagna, Enoch Pratt Free Library. 

Library Automation; a State of the Art 
Review. Ed. by Stephen R. Salmon. Chi­
cago: American Library Association, 
1969. 175p. $7.50. (73-77283). 

The papers presented at the ALA Pre­
conference Institute on Library Automa­
tion at San Francisco in June 1967 consti­
tute this volume. The purpose of the insti­
tute was to inform ALA members of the 
state of the art of library automation. It 
achieved its purpose, and with the prin­
cipal exception of on-line applications de­
scribed since 1967, it still constitutes an in­
formative review for librarians not directly 
involved in research and development. 

Separate sections of the report are de­
voted to acquisitions, cataloging, serials, 
and circulation, but the publication lacks 
an adequate review of information retriev­
al. Necessarily lacking are descriptions of 
on-line systems in acquisitions, serials, and 
circulation that have been activated since 
1967. 

Other sections discuss the MARC Project 
at the Library of Congress, networks, sys­
tem analysis and design, and buildings. 
The MARC Project has had major devel­
opments since 1967, which of course are 
not in Library Automation. On the other 
hand, system analysis and design is a time­
less topic. One of the most interesting sec­
tions is that by Robert H. Rohlf entitled 
"Building-Planning Implications of Auto­
mation." This section does not give cook­
book answers to those who wish detailed 
replies to the question "How will library 
automation affect the building I am plan­
ning?" but it does give a valuable basis 
from which effective planning can proceed. 

Library Automation will be a useful and 
informative publication for some years to 
come.-Frederick G. Kilgour, The Ohio 
College Library Center. 

Cataloging U.S.A. By PaulS. Dunkin. Chi­

cago: American Library Association, 1969. 
159p. $5.00. ( 69-17830). 

Paul Dunkin has given us a brief survey 
of cataloging theory in the United States. 
He prefaces his book with an annotated 
list of the most influential writings on cata­
loging; after which he summarizes the cat­
aloging codes from Cutter's on. Then, un­
der each problem area-entry, description, 
subject, classification, the catalog-he dis­
cusses the major points of view and their 
theoretical bases. His expressed intention is 
to show why we catalog as we do. 

The categories, assumptions, and objec­
tives of the transcendent theories are pre­
sented with clarity. We see how we arrived 
at our current practices, that they do not 
form a coherent whole and reflect histori­
cal not logical development. They are 
largely "the accumulation of what has been 
done in LC" ( p. 143) , a compromise of 
conflicting bibliographical objectives, par­
ticularly of conflicting theories on "the pub­
lic's needs and/ or wants. (They are not 
necessarily the same.)" 

We index the book collection both to lo­
cate a work and to relate it to other works. 
That is our first principle. Cataloging at­
tempts to do this systematically, and parts 
of Cutter's coherent but expensive system 
still stand. Parts have fallen under attack. 
But no matter how cogent or inviting later 
theories have been, the system has re­
mained closed to any but peripheral and 
compromised changes, adopted usually for 
economic reasons and tending to make the 
system a less coherent whole. Mr. Dunkin 
shows us why we have arrived at our cur­
rent practices. We all know what they are 
and what problems they raise in applica­
tion and comprehension. Thus we enter 
works on "principles of authorship," not 
according to the title page statement the 
author and publisher have agreed on. Our 
forms of entry reflect wave after wave of 
opinion. We relate some types of material 
by added entries, others by uniform titles, 
and still others by form headings. Our sub­
ject headings reflect a number of views on 
the uses of language, and a continual re­
duction of attempts to apply them system­
atically or to relate them fully. MARC 
finds it necessary to bolster our descrip­



tions with explicit statements on such 
points as language of text, country of ori­
gin, and index. Even the paging state­
ment, shown to be most important in es..: 
tablishing editions, has gone wild with the 
acceptance of Title II descriptions. The 
catalog gets larger and more confusing. 

The attempt to tie cataloging at least 
physically to books was dismissed ten years 
ago in the Library of Congress' The Cata­
loging-in-Source Experiment. This report, 
called by Dunkin "an amazing document," 
is one still deeply resented by catalogers 
outside the Library of Congress, who did 
not feel the experiment's pressures. Noth­
ing since has promised immediate practical 
relief. Attempts to tie cataloging more log­
ically or even more simply to books have 
added to the cost or to the confusion or to 
both. 

Mr. Dunkin has tried to limit himself to 
descriptive rather than critical analysis. 
The reader will be grateful to have the his­
tory laid out concisely. This is an impor­
tant book, intelligently done; if it emerges 
as a kind of epitaph to cataloging theory 
as we have known it, perhaps machines 
will someday release us and give us a 
chance at theories again.-Lois Hacker, 
Cornell University Libraries. 

Prolegomena to Library Classification. 
3d ed. By S. R. Ranganathan, assisted by 
M. A. Gopinath. New York: Asia Pub­
lishing House, 1967. 640p. (73-427373). 

It is with deep gratitude that I remem­
ber my first encounter with the Prolego­
mena. It (then in its second edition) 
opened my eyes with its clear statements 
of the problems of classification, as well as 
with its amazing revelation that anyone 
had gone so far toward their solution. This 
third edition is not a revision in the usual 
sense, but r ather a development of those 
parts of the second edition of the greatest 
generality, excluding much of the histori­
cal, speculative, and practical discussions 
which (the author informs us) are being 
developed in two other books: Classifica­
tion: Retrospective and Prospective, and 
D epth Classification and Its D esign. Thus 
the new Prolegomena consists, in a way, of 
three separate titles. Libraries ·With the 

Recent Publications j 205 

second edition should not retire it to inac­
tive storage unless they acquire all three 
new titles. 

If there is a work in which is concen­
trated (and the word must be taken in a 
very strong sense) all that is most germinal 
in the theory of classification, it is the 
Prolegomena. Nothing else can rank with it 
except the 1876 Dewey and Cutter works, 
and perhaps the Gardin team's L'Automa­
tisation des Recherches Documentaires. In 
this new incarnation it has become more 
than ever nothing but what-must-be-con­
sidered-before ... , less a survey that in­
cludes prolegomena! matter. No one (ex­
cept the beginning student, who would in 
all but a very few cases be quite put off 
by the unaccustomed rigor of the mode of 
exposition and who would be in principle 
unaware of the aporia in the praxis that 
have led to this theoria) who is serious 
about understanding, constructing, apply­
ing, or using any classification or system of 
indexing can afford to be uninformed 
about what Ranganathan works through 
here. 

The new edition would better have 
been (like the second) printed in En­
gland; there are misprints in abundance, 
though most are not too serious-just ir­
ritating. But there are a few weaknesses of 
a more serious sort. Interpolation (internal 
hospitality) in chain (§LG) is not really 
explained, though Ranganathan along with 
everyone else assumes that Dewey's radix­
fractional principle makes it possible. But 
it may instead be that only a faceted nota­
tion does-and then only in a somewhat 
weak sense. Dichotomy is discussed in the 
proper pejorative light (§PC) , but its 
real function (positive/negative = enumera­
tion/"others") is not mentioned. Figure 16 
(p. 367) is intended to show the complexi­
ty of "the tree of knowledge"; it is so com­
plex as to confuse, and the lack of explana­
tory text makes it not a help but a hin­
drance to the reader. UDC is made to 
seem to have Anteriorising Common Iso­
lates (p. 448-449), which would assured­
ly surprise most of its adherents; the lack 
of phase-relational flexibility in UDC (p. 
462) is largely true, but the pioneer efforts 
of Kervegant have led at least to an offi­
cial t est of a relator-schema of my own