College and Research Libraries In this much needed work, the level of readability is uneven; some of the essays are much more scholarly and others much more popularly written. This approach helps to mold the work into its purpose-to attract the nation's young early and to guide the more mature student into career choices. Even so, the problems of these groups are much more easily enumerated than the so- lutions. The work should still serve its pur- pose well and indeed should .go a long way toward encouraging minority groups to enter the profession and to stimulate the na- tion to commit itself to ensure equality of education and job opportunities for all minorities and to honor that commitment. While necessary and well intended, the few federal and other institutional efforts in- itiated to counteract this problem have been too meager, too restrictive, too tempo- rary.-Jessie Carney Smith, University Li- brarian and Federal Relations Officer, Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee. Personnel Development in Libraries. Edited by R. Kay Maloney. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Symposium Sponsored by the Alumni and the Faculty of the Rutgers University Graduate School of Library Service. Issues in Library and In- formation Sciences, no . 3. New Brunswick, N.J. : Bureau of Library and Information Science Research, Rutgers University Graduate School of Library Service, 1976. 115p. $6. LC 77-5023. ISBN 0-8135-0843-6. (Distributed by Rutgers University Press.) This volume constitutes the proceedings of the thirteenth annual Rutgers GSLS Alumni/Faculty Symposium, which was held in April 1975. It includes an introduction by the editor, three papers, a discussion sec- tion, and a selected annotated bibliography. The discussion section-about a sixth of the book-should have been left out. It is marred by typos (management's "bag of tracks"!), and the discussion groups too often wound up discussing tangential issues. At times, the groups seem to have missed the speakers' points altogether. The bibli- ography seems adequate, though its 102 an- notations might have been briefer and more informative, and it might have focused less narrowly on 1970-1975. Recent Publications I 137 The three papers themselves make a total of only forty-four pages. For those not abreast with the current literature, Jeffrey Gardner's paper could be useful. Gardner reviews the inadequacy of salary increments as a motivating device, then describes two "new" approaches: peer review and perfor- mance goals. Myrl Ricking's paper suggests that "task analysis" might help "define, at long last, what the profession of librarian really is." Unfortunately, as Ricking points out, her paper provides little practical ad- vice, since task analysis is "exacting . . . ir- ritatingly detailed ... imd very expensive." Paul Strauss' paper is the most interesting of the three. He makes the point that job enrichment and career ladder programs fre- quently fail because they do not recognize that many workers prefer externally im- posed work-structures while other workers reject such externally imposed structures. His distinction between "structure abetted" and "structure threatened" individuals is useful as still another means of sorting out the · difference between professional and nonprofessional tasks. The "personnel" referred to in the book's title are actually professional librarians rather than library employees in general. The personnel methods described are more appropriate for a large library than for a small one. Peer review, for example, takes place on a collegewide basis rather than in- house in a small institution. The book's focus is therefore much more narrow than its title implies, while the · book's brevity in itself restricts its usefulness. The application of modern personnel techniques to libraries is probably for the good, especially when those techniques en- hance the likelihood that librarians will be able to maintain and develop their prof~s­ sional skills. However, this particular volume lends little to the dialogue.-Peter Dollard, Alma College Library, Alma, Michigan. Levine, Jamie J., and Logan, Timothy. On-Line ·Resource Sharing: A Comparison of BALLOTS and OCLC. A Guide for Library Administrators. San Jose, Calif.: California Library Authority for Systems and Services (CLASS), 1977. 121p. $5. (Available from California Library Author- 138 I College & Research Libraries • March 1978 ity for Systems and Services, 1415 Koll Circle, Suite 101, San Jose, CA 95112.) The title of this book is somewhat mis- leading. No real discussion of resource shar- ing is attempted; nor is much specific guid- ance offered in making a decision about joining either of the two on-line biblio- graphic networks described: Stanford Uni- versity's program, Bibliographic Automation of Large Library Operations Using Time Sharing (BALLOTS), and the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC). As the authors are careful to point out in their introduction, the book is primarily a comparison between BALLOTS and OCLC, which gives the library administrator a start- ing point to begin an analysis . This the book does very well. It is written in a clear, con- cise style. No extensive knowledge of data processing is needed to understand it. Yet, the issues treated are certainly relevant to many automation decisions and even extend to financial and administrative considera- tions. The organization of the book is well thought out and makes the book valuable as a primer for those unfamiliar with either or both BALLOTS and OCLC, as a review for those with some familiarity, or as a refer- ence book for almost any interested reader. Most of the text is devoted to making spe- cific comparisons between these two sys- tems on a topic-by-topic basis. The rele- vance of the topics chosen is insured by the fact that most of them stem from actual questions that were posed to the staff of the California Library Authority for Systems and Services (CLASS). Thus, the book has a freshness of direct response, which is sel- dom experiences in reading similar publica- tions. To contrast the comparisons more sharp- ly, for most of the book, characteristics of BALLOTS appear on left-hand pages and characteristics of OCLC appear on right- hand pages. The reader can easily concen- trate on. one or the other system or consider both together. A detailed table of contents aids the user in selecting specific topics of interest. Those who wish to pursue the sub- ject further are aided by brief bibliog- raphies. In addition to the comparisons, a series of appendixes presents card formats, simulated display of screen formats, and simulated e~amples of the most common products. These are of considerable help to the reader in visualizing different aspects of either system. The authors ought to be congratulated for producing a readable, easy-to-use manual that can be read on many levels and serve the purposes of many different kinds of us- ers. Unfortunately, information of this kind ages rapidly and needs to be updated fre- quently. Therefore, the value of the book will decline as time passes beyond its publi- cation date of June 1977. Nevertheless, it ought to be well worth the price of $5 to those readers who will use it over the next year or two.-Richard]. Talbot , Director of Libraries , University of Massachusetts , Amherst. User Studies: An Introductory Guide and Select Bibliography. Edited by Geoffrey Ford. Occasional Paper No.1. Sheffield: University of Sheffield, Centre for Re- search on User Studies. 1977. 92p. ISBN 0-906088-00-3. In January 1976 the Centre for Research on User Studies at the University of Sheffield was set up with funds from the British Library Research and Development Department. The Centre set as its first task the investigation of work previously under- taken and the publication of a state-of-the- art report. It is not claimed as an exhaustive bibliography but rather a guide to the litera- ture that the project team considered useful in defining the scope of user studies, in suggesting hypotheses about the behavior of information consumers, in illustrating tech- niques of study, and in presenting findings about information consumers. A number of the references are drawn from the American Psychological Association Project on Scientific Information Exchange in Psychology, published in three volumes over the years 1963-69, and from the An- nual Review of Information Science and Technology, published since 1966. Despite these strong American underpinnings, the rest of the 236 references have an under- standably British flavor. While the tabular data in this stencil- reproduced report are largely drawn from other publications and the reports on re- search already conducted are rather per-