College and Research Libraries BOOK REVIEWS Sable Martin H. International and Area St.,;dies Lilwarianship. Case Studies. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1973. 166p. "International" and "comparative" are among the "in" concepts in librarianship these days, as witness the marked increase in library school curricula offerings, both in Great Britain and the United States, and the geometric increase of index entries un- der these rubrics in Library Literature and Library and Info1'11ULtion Science Abstracts. Mr. Sable, too, has climbed aboard this bandwagon in choosing the title of his new book. Its purpose is to enable "students and teachers at library schools world-wide to become more aware of their international responsibilities and opportunities" (p.vi). The twenty-nine cases presented do not, unfortunately, accomplish this aim. They offer, rather, a series of problems in acquisi- tions, cataloging, circulation, bibliography, personnel, and reference in academic li- braries. Some, though by no means all, of the questions appended to the cases have to do with "foreign" publications, organiza- tions, or institutions, but the basic prob- lems posed by the cases are not internation- al in nature; the international aspect is of- ten incidental and not essential to the issues involved. Further, the questions for each case are generally a mixed bag; some have nothing to do with the "solution" of the problem, as do cases in law or business ad- ministration texts. Thus, the :first case, "The Chinese Cataloger," is concerned solely with personnel policy questions which do not in the least depend upon the fact that the staff member involved happens to be competent in Chinese (p.16-17). In case four, "Foreign Folklore," the principal ques- tions addressed to the student are whether folklore materials are essential in the teach- ing of Spanish and appropriate for a college library; what obligation the college librari- an has in aiding an instructor to obtain ma- terials she deems necessary for her teach- 372 I Recent Publications i'ng; who is responsible for setting acquisi- tions policy; whether folklore is a disci- pline; and abstracting and indexing services in the field of folklore ( p.34). Again, in case twenty-four, "International Noise Pol- lution Abstracts," the questions are biblio- graphical and reference ones (p.142-143). To call cases like these "international and area studies" seems to be stretching the concepts a bit. The cases are presented clearly and log- ically, though often rather naively, and they offer useful, often important questions con- cerning academic library policy, particular- ly personnel policy, and on reference and bibliography, sometimes of a "foreign" na- ture. Library school teachers should find the work useful. They will need to correct or modify, for the benefit of their students, a number of statements that appear throughout the work such as, for example, the following: "Dr. Avon has made it a practice of walking off with books without checking them out. Books that haven't even been cataloged yet" (p.36). [The anthropology depart- ment has] "commandeered the head of the reference department and she is now vir- tually working for the anthropology depart- ment." "It also seems that recently [pro- fessor] Avon has acquired one of our other reference librarians" ( p.37) . [The director of the University Library has] "introduced [the Farmington Plan] at those universities in which he served as acquisitions head" (p.120). [The titles acquired by the Na- tional Program for Acquisitions and Cata- loging are] collected by the Library of Congress for distribution to universities . . . all over the country" (p.122) .-]. Periam Danton, School of Librarianship, University of California, Berkeley. White, Carl M., and others. Sources of In· formation in the Social Sciences: A Guide to the Literature. 2d ed. Chicago: American Library Assn., 1973. Dr. White, in his introduction, states that "the purpose of the book is simple, to make ' · "4 -1 j I .