College and Research Libraries


BOOK REVIEWS 

Spyers-Duran, Peter, and Gore, Daniel, eds. 
Economics of Approval Plans. Proceed-
ings of the Third International Seminar 
on Approval and Gathering Plans in 
Large and Medium Size Academic Li-
braries, Held in the Ramada Inn, West 
Palm Beach, Florida, February 17-19, 
1971. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood 
Press, Inc., 1972. 134 p. 
Librarians probably use their literature 

to better advantage than most professional 
people. We readily learn from others in our 
field because we are inclined to write about 
our experiences and also because we read 
a lot. To learn more about approval or 
gathering plans, I recommend the reading 
of Economics of Approval :Plans. 

The editors of this small volume might 
just as well have titled it another "how-to" 
book with the following possibilities: ". . . 
Establish an Approval Plan; . . . Choose 
an Approval Plan Dealer; . . . Save Money 
With an Approval Plan." Actually, the title 
was taken from the first essay in the book 
and it only partly describes the contents. 

As the subtitle tells us, it is Number 3 in 
a series of seminar proceedings on approval 
plans and from all indications the subject 
has been exhausted, at least until a new 
breed of approval plan is devised to aid or 
bedevil the librarian. 

The papers are varied in quality and 
style. We have the scientific approach of 
a study of the economics of approval plans 
as well as chatty, off-the-cuff statements ex-
plaining why approval plans fail. There is 
reported a case history in establishing the 
plan in a medium-sized university by Le-
Moyne Anderson, a useful account pointing 
out pitfalls along the way. One paper re-
counts for us the kinds of plans offered by 
three major dealers, a revealing study that 
is good to have at hand, although such in-
formation becomes dated very fast. 

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Recent Publications 

One chapter is concerned with a panel 
discussion by book dealers; conversational 
in tone, it really contains little of signifi-
cance for us. Comments such as "bugs in 
the program," "our sales were suffering," 
etc., were hardly worth capturing on paper. 

Have we answered all the questions? 
Does anyone still have doubts? At least one 
of the papers would lead us to believe that 
there are indeed no unanswered questions: 
"It seems obvious that the approval plan 
technique for building research libraries is 
here to stay. The results of the present 
study clearly demonstrate its efficiency and 
effectiveness." [Axford] 

Richard Chapin finalizes the volume with 
his witty summary which turns up some 
sharp deductions about the three-day con-
ference. Once again we are reminded that 
"we don't know what we're talking about." 
Who has yet defined a gathering plan, an 
approval plan, a blanket order? The impor-
tance of collecting current materials and 
doing it well is noted by Mr. Chapin as he 
opines that 80 percent of all research done 
on a university campus is based upon ma-
terials published in the last ten years. He 
takes to task the writers of "efficiency pa-
pers" because "they seem to indicate that 
books received on approval plans get on the 
shelves at hardly any cost." There are still 
selection costs, despite the best efforts of 
the dealers' computers. 

The book does not repeat what has been 
said before at the seminars, for the most 
part. New ideas, strategies, and experiences 
from which most of us could benefit will be 
found here. On the other hand, the library 
scene has changed somewhat since these 
papers were written, a fact which will have 
to be taken into consideration when reading 
the book-Roscoe Rouse, Oklahoma State 
University, Stillwater. 

Wasserman, Paul. The New Librarianship; 
A Challenge for Change. New York: 
Bowker, 1972. 
Paul Wasserman's new book is an impor-

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tant one which will provoke considerable 
discussion. In it he notes that "Criticism 
serves to open debate, to admit to a range 
of options, and to awaken a partisanship 
which must defend itself in the open mar-
ketplace of competitive ideas and prescrip-
tions." His criticism does just that. 

Wasserman feels the profession is failing 
society; that its leadership is conservative 
and unresponsive; that we develop collec-
tions at the cost of service; that we recruit 
the wrong kind of people; that our profes-
sional organizations, our library schools, 
and our literature are inadequate to solve 
today' s problems, much less tomorrow's; 
and that libraries, all libraries presumably, 
are already an endangered species perhaps 
soon to be a footnote in our history like the 
Chautauqua movement. 

It is a well-organized book, based on the 
imaginative identification and use of 
sources too often overlooked. The author's 
knowledge of the process of change and his 
analysis of what he feels is needed in de-
veloping leadership to do it are thoughtful 
and perceptive. If much of this is not new, 
it is presented from a new viewpoint, it is 
based on careful and creative research, and 
there is a kind of luminous sincerity in the 
author's concern for his subject, a sincerity 
somewhat marred by passion. 

The book is a polemic which compels our 
attention and, not surprisingly, it is also ir-
ritating. Wasserman's style is occasionally 
obscure, even turgid, and many will be an-
noyed with his fondness for vogue words-
congruent, viable, relevant, dysfunctional, 
alienated, societal, syndrome, etc. A more 
serious irritant is the author's arrogance, 
that very arrogance which has discredited 
the whole intellectual community. We are 
a sorry lot, we librarians, and there is no 
health in us. We are old and tired and mid-
dle class and our values and virtues, if any, 
are meaningless. A young, jobless welfare 
mother may be a villain; a working middle-
aged librarian must be. In this sense, it is 
not only an academically fashionable book, 
but a sentimental one as well. 

Aside from the book's passion, its Band 
of Hope flavor, and its modish assumptions, 
one of its more serious Haws is that it ad-
dresses itself to the whole of librarianship 
as an entity. It must be increasingly evident 

Recent Publications I 285 

to all that this is not valid. The unique 
clientele, resources, goals, and governance 
of our various libraries do not lend them-
selves to Wasserman's blanket indictments 
and broad generalizations. The differences 
between the Newberry Library and the 
Newark Public defy comparison. 

Wasserman is a hopeful man. He antici-
pates replacing today's ineffective leader-
ship with young people (of whom he is 
tenderly fond) drawn from the behavioral 
and social sciences, moved bv an idealism 
we have long lost, who ~ill somehow, 
through greater sensitivity and compassion, 
superior education, and a more demanding 
society, revolutionize our present concepts 
of library service. This done, they will move 
us further toward that unattainable goal, 
the elimination of poverty, ignorance, evil, 
and injustice. I wish it so may be. 

Whether they do or not, Wasserman has 
suggested a sophisticated way of examining 
our problems, based on high ethical and 
professional standards, and we cannot just 
murmur «Plus ga change, plus c' est la 
meme chose." Nor can we ignore his per-
ception of reality, avoid recognizing his 
critical talents, or retreat to a permanent-
ly defensive position in a demanding so-
ciety.-Stuart Forth, :Pennsylvania State 
University College, University Park. 

Houghton, Bernard. Out of the Dinosaurs 
-the Evolution of the National Lending 
Library for Science and Technology. 
Hamden, Conn., and London: Linnet 
Books and Clive Bingley, 1972. 
This is the first in a projected series from 

British publisher Clive Bingley on "The 
Management of Change-Studies in the 
Evolution of Library Systems," and Evolu-
tion is also in the subtitle. The title itself 
refers to one of NLL Director D. J. Urqu-
hart's more provocative statements, here 
highlighted facing the title-page, comparing 
the failure of traditional libraries to see the 
significance of the NLL, to the dinosaurs' 
fatal incomprehension of the new species 
appearing around them. 

It occurs to me that no one has adequate-
ly dealt with the thrust of Urquhart's analogy 
in that quotation, and one must include 
Mr. Houghton in that, despite the title-page 
fanfare. For, as indicated in a recent British