College and Research Libraries


154 I College & Research Libraries • March 1980 

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and the others by sociologists, political sci-
entists, economists, and educators, who 
provide a variety of points of view about the 
philosophy, economics, and social respon-
sibilities of libraries and librarians. 

The perspective is frequently historical, 
tracing the evolution of libraries from a lim-
ited service for an already privileged class 
with sufficient education and leisure to 
make use of whatever the library offered to 
the multicultural center of today that at-
tempts to provide something for all ages and 
all classes. 

However, Mary Lee Bundy in a 1972 ar-
ticle lashes out at those responsible for li-
brary service in the inner cities for not 
meeting the needs of ethnic minorities and 
the disadvantaged. As she puts it: "The pub-
lic library is among the institutions which 
misuses [sic] its public charge to promote 
one set of cultural values and one cultural 
heritage as if it were superior to others." 
She believes the library should act as an in-
formation and r~ferral service helping to 
link people and community action groups. 
Similar sentiments are echoed by Len 
Davies in his article "Libraries, Culture and 
Blacks." This traditional middle-classness of 
libraries and the need to revise the basic 
ideology of librarianship and the role of the 
library in the community are recurring 
themes in many of t~e articles. 

References are printed at the end of each 
article and there is an additional seven-page 
bibliography for further reading. The book 
has been most carefully edited, but the 
format is somewhat unattractive. Pages are 
closely printed and net easily skimmed. 
While many common ideas are expre~sed by 
the fifteen authors, readers are left to create 
their own unity of thought from the multi-
ple points of view expressed. Persons look-
ing for solutions' to the usual library prob-
lems of automation, staffing, shrinking 
budgets, and rising costs .._.will not read very 
far, but those interested in the philosophy 
of libraries and in library and social history 
will find food for thought.-Dorothy F. 
Thomson, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, 
Canada. 

Alexander, Edward P. Museums in Motion: 
An Introduction to the History and 
Functions of Museums. Nashville, Tenn.: 



American Assn. for State and Local His-
tory, 1979. 308p. $12.95 cloth; $7.95 
paper. LC 78-1189. ISBN 0-910050-35-X. 
This is a first-rate introduction to the his-

tory and function of museums by a distin-
guished leader in the movement to develop 
professional standards for museums and 
their personnel. Edward Porter Alexander, 
trained as a historian at Columbia, director 
ofV interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg, 
194~72, and, from 1972 to 1978, director of 
museum studies at the University of Dela-
ware, has pulled together a vast amount of 
material, condensed it into thirteen read-
able chapters, and seasoned it with his own 
insights and perceptions. 

Librarians can learn a lot from his book, 
especially from those chapters on collecting, 
conservation, and exhibition, for the princi-
ples Alexander cites for museums are 
equally applicable to libraries, especially 
those libraries with extensive holdings in 
manuscripts and special collections. Recog-
nizing the elitist nature of museums (as is 
true of most libraries), the author is also 
concerned about how to enlarge the audi-
ence for museum programs. Librarians may 
be especially interested in some of the 
studies of museum audiences, all of which 
ar(f cited and properly referenced in Alex-
ander's chapter "The Museum as Research" 
(p.164-69). 

In his opening chapter, Alexander dis-
cusses "What Is a Museum?" and he then 
proceeds to discuss art, natural history, sci:-
ence and technology, and history museums 
in separate chapters, with another chapter 
on botanical gardens and zoos. These chap-
ters provide an overview of museums in 
Western Europe and the United States and 
conclude with the statement of problems 
facing each type. For example, 

The art museum has had considerable difficulty in 
appearing relevant to the general public .... A 
recent French study found that art museums 
were only appreciated by the more elevated 
classes of society, and that two-thirds of the ordi-
nary visitors were confused, bored, and unable to 
recall the name of a single work or artist that had 
impress~d them (p.35). 

Alexander knows his museum literature, 
as his thirty-two pages of notes indicate. 
Another useful feature of the book is an 

Recent Publications I 155 

eight-page classified list entitled "Some 
Basic Museum Books" (p.284-92). 

While the first part of the book is espe-
cially interesting for those readers who 
know little about the history of museums, 
the second half, which deals with major ac-
tivities of museums, may be the most useful 
for librarians. There follow six chapters: 
"The Museum as Collection," "The 
Museum as Conservation," "The Museum 
as Research," "The Museum as Exhibition," 
"The Museum as Interpretation," and "The 
Museum as Cultural Center and Social In-
strument." 

Throughout these sections there is an ob-
vious concern about the rise of egalitarian 
ideals and the attack on museums as irrele-
vant to ethnic groups and minorities during 
the late sixties and early seventies. How 
does one justify museums and libraries and 
research universities in an increasingly 
egalitarian society? Alexander's concern 
comes through, but i.t' s obvious that he 
doesn't have any better answers than the 
rest of us. 

Those librarians with a concern for de-
veloping collection policies, especially as 
they embrace gifts, should certainly read his 
chapter on museum collecting. Also, the 
problem of organizing the extensive collec-
tions like the 500,000 items in the National 
Museum of Natural History's crustacean col-
lection (p.130) does seem similar to biblio-
graphic problems in librarianship. Too, con-
servation, just now becoming a major item 
of consideration for librarians in large re-
search collections, certainly has been a con-
cern for both museums and librarians. Prob-
lems of research, exhibitions, and interpre-
tation are also similar to those of libraries. 

Alexander obviously prefers the profes-
sional to the volunteer guides (p.198), but 
he recognizes reality: museums are unlikely 
to have enough financial resources to do 
without volunteers. And public and com-
munity college librarians, who regard their 
libraries as the community's social and cul-
tural centers, should read carefully the 
claim museums make to the same role 
(especially p.217-18). 

Alexander's last chapter, "The Museum 
Profession," seems to me his weakest. Yet 
here again the similarities to librarianship 
are evident. The total museum work force 



156 I College & Research Libraries • March 1980 

in 1971-72 was estimated at 113,000, of 
whom 30,400 were professionals (p.234). 
That's about one-fourth of the estimated 
number of librarians Michael Cooper said 
we had in 1976 (American Libraries 7:S27 
[June 1976]). It would appear that museum 
·professionals are about where librarians 
were fifty years ago. Like early librarians, 
many of them still learn on the job, though 
a formal program of museum studies is now 
present in about two dozen places and pre-
pares the professional for entry into the 
field through a master's degree program. 
Curators in special departments, of course, 
find the Ph.D. highly desirable and some-
times essential. The other characteristics of 
a profession are discussed in terms with 
which most librarians are familiar, but one 
difference should be noted: the American 
Association of Museums now accredits 
museums, and not just their staff, that meet 
certain standards. 

This book can certainly be recommended 
to academic librarians who would like either 
to know more about museums or to com-

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pare notes on librarianship and its 
similarities to the emerging profession of 
museology. Indeed, one wishes that our 
field had a book on the history and 
functions of libraries that gave the layperson 
a panoramic view of the field in such a 
well-outlined and readable style. Unfortu-
nately, the library community's attempts at 
informing the lay public have generally 
been poorly done, though Jean Key Gates' 
Introduction to Librarianship is very good 
and comes closest to what Alexander has 
done here. 

Published by the . American Association 
for State and Local History, Museums in 
Motion is attractive typographically and con-
tains some interesting illustrations. My only 
complaint is that the boards have warped in 
the relatively short time the book has been 
in my possession. One might have expected 
better binding from such an association.-
Edward G. Holley, University of North 
Carolina, Chapel Hill. 

Bonham-Carter, Victor. Authors by Profes-
sion. Volume One: From the Introduction 
of Printing until the Copyright Act 1911. 
Los Altos, Calif.: Kaufmann, 1978. 252p. 
$11.95. ISBN 0-913232-59-9. 
Even as only the first volume of what is 

to be a two-volume work, Authors by Pro-
fession's 252 pages seem slight compared to 
the task: "to illustrate," from the invention 
of printing to-with the publication of the 
second volume-the present, "how certain 
poets, novelists, essayists, historians, biog-
raphers, dramatists, and other sorts of 
writers, made their way within the circuJD.-
stances of their day." An intriguing and am-
bitious undertaking-and it succeeds in 
being useful despite some sacrifice of bal-
ance. 

The significance of the transactions re-
corded in the Stationers' Company register; 
the financial losses and textual degradations 
due to pirated printings; Pope's entrepre-
neurial brilliance in promoting subscription 
editions of his works-none of these is news 
to the literary scholar or serious reader, and 
Bonham-Carter accordingly deals with them 
only briefly. Likewise brief, but less appro-
priately so, is the attention to the interplay 
and frequent conflict between the author as 
author and the author as an individual try-