College and Research Libraries


Pergamon, 1979. 332p. $42 hardcover, 
$19.50 flexicover. LC 78-40530. ISBN 
0-08-022254-4 hardcover; 0-08-23344-9 
flexicover. 
In this book William Garvey, a social psy-

chologist and director of the Center for Re-
search in Scientific Communication at Johns 
Hopkins University, has addressed the 
characteristics, peculiarities, strengths, and 
weaknesses of the scientific communication 
process. He does this from the standpoint of 
more than ten years of research, much of it 
supported by the National Science Founda-
tion. 

Garvey has written on this topic on many 
earlier occasions. What makes this book sig-
nificant for librarians and information spe-
-cialists (he states at the very beginning that 
he uses the terms interchangeably) is that 
he attempts to show us how knowledge of 
the information habits, preferences, and 
biases of scientists can help us to improve 
service to our user clientele. As a social sci-
entist, Garvey argues that librarians as fel-
low social scientists should be able to adapt 
their practices to the needs and preferences 
of their users. 

Garvey's work is important if we are dis-
turbed · by repeated user studies that 
confirm the library is, for scientists and en-
gineers, a low-ranking source of information 
and the place to which they tum when all 
else has failed. These studies support Gar-
vey's contention that we do not serve our 
clientele particularly well because we have 
paid little attention to their value systems 
and how they work. 

Garvey addr.e~ses this book to us in part 
because "the technology for providing in-
formation services to scientists has been less 
successful than the sophistication of the 
technology warrants," and because he now 
finds that his "private concerns were being 
articulated by experts in the field of library/ 
information science and technology." 

As the author is the first to state, this 
book really presents no new findings or star-
tling innovations. About 60 percent of it 
consists of reprints of earlier articles, writ-
ten over the past ten years, that describe 
how Garvey and other social scientists 
planned and executed studies of the full 
spectrum of scientific communication activi-
ties for specific disciplines. 

Recent Publications I 167 

The author hopes that they may, there-
fore, serve as examples of how librarians 
might explore the scientific communication 
of their constituency. The reprints ~e not 
redundant, because they appeared in jour-
nals that librarians are not likely to read. 
The effort to tie these . previous studies to 
what librarians should do is probably not as 
helpful, however, as the author would like, 
because it leaves much to the initiative of 
the reader. 

The importance of this book, to the re-
viewer, is in the first five chapters, which 
describe, more clearly and succinctly than 
he has seen previously, the process of scien-
tific research, creation of knowledge, and 
dissemination of findings. The last of these 
chapters provides a capping stone in exam-
ining "The Librarian's Role as a Social Sci-
entist." 

The book will be useful and supportive 
reading for any librarian who aspires to 
more than passive collection building and to 
more than fetching and carrying at the 
sometimes misdirected and confused whim 
of the scholarly patron, and who wants to 
become a full and acknowledged partner in 
the information process, helping users in 
the areas in which they are not knowledge-
able (and perhaps not interested) enough to 
properly serve themselves. 

It is probably the best indication of the 
reviewer's opinion of this work to report 
that he has assigned its preface and first 
chapter as required reading for his library 
school class in the literature of science and 
technology. -Herbert S. White, Indiana 
University, Bloomington. 

"The Economics of Academic Libraries." 
Allen Kent, Jacob Cohen, and K. Leon 
Montgomery, issue editors. Library 
Trends 28:1-120 (Summer 1979). $5. 
ISSN 0024-2594. (Available from: Univ. of 
Illinois Pr., Urbana, IL 61801.) 
The title selected by the editors is a bit 

misleading. Actually, only two of the 
papers-and the least rewarding ones at 
that-deal directly with the economics of 
academic libraries. Jacob Cohen and Ken-
neth W. Leeson marshal an array of pre-
viously published statistics to confirm some 
propositions that most academic librarians 
know all too well: library budgets have de-



168 I College & Research Libraries • March 1980 

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reseamlications, inc. 
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dined during the decade of the 1970s, per-
sonnel expenditures are consuming an in-
creasingly large share of those budgets, and 
materials expenditures have been redistrib-
uted in favor of serials and at the expense of 
monographs. 

In a later chapter, Miriam A. Drake and 
Harold A. Olsen conclude that the continu-
ing financial pressure upon academic librar-
ies will force them to innovate. The ten-
dency to substitute machines for humans in 
the performance of routine tasks will esca-
late. Networks will grow in size and in the 
diversity of services offered. New ways of 
financing library services will have to be 
found. 
T~ remaining papers, with one delightful 

exception, suggest that economic theory can 
provide important new insights to our 
understanding of academic libraries and 
their problems. 

The introductory chapter by Richard B. 
McKenzie succeeds admirably in making 
the basic conceptual framework of the 
"dismal science" comprehensible to the li-
brarian unfamiliar with its mysteries. His 
explanations of the interaction of supply and 
demand, market behavior, profit maximiza-
tion, and similar economic terms will ade-
quately prepare even the neophyte for the 
succeeding chapters. 

Separate pape:t:s by Donald W. King and 
Yale M. Braunstein address the controver-
sial issue of user fees. King identifies sev-
eral alternative pricing policies that the li-
brary may consider and suggests that dif-
ferent services such as on-line literature 
searching, interlibrary loans, etc., may re-
quire different pricing strategies. According 
to this analysis, fees for on-line searching . 
and photocopying are appropriate and inter-
library loan fees may be appropriate, but 
charges for direct borrowing by patrons 
should be avoided. King concludes with a 
cautionary note advising librarians who 
adopt such fees to weigh carefully both the 
administrative . costs of user charges and the 
difficult-to-quantify societal benefits derived 
from the use of library materials or services. 

Braunstein points out that library use im-
plies a cost not only to the library but to the 
user and other patrons as well. These in-
visible user costs include . the time, money, 
and effort spent going to the library and the 



loss of these brought about by the actions of 
other users. In today' s world, the library no 
longer enjoys a monopoly of information 
services. If the library is to survive in an in-
creasingly competitive market, it must be-
come more efficient. Braunstein argues that 
library efficiency can be enhanced by the 
adoption of appropriate pricing policies and 
by tailoring services to better meet patron 
needs. 

The most provocative paper in the collec-
tion is Michael D. Cooper's "Economics of 
Library Size: A Preliminary Inquiry." His 
empirical research, conducted in the public 
library setting but still applicable to 
academic libraries, seems to indicate that 
average costs per measurable unit of 
output-measurable output includes mate-
rials cataloged, reference questions an-
swered, items circulated, etc.-remain the 
same regardless of the size of the library or 
the population it serves. Despite the meth-
odological problems that Cooper recognizes, 
including the difficulty of measuring many 
forms of library output, assigning appropri-
ate weights to different kinds of output, and 
recognizing differences in the quality of 
output, this is an important study, which 
alone justifies the purchase of the volume. 

The concluding essay by Maurice B. 
Line, entitled "The Psychopathology of Un-
economics," is pure delight. The responses 
of librarians unaccustomed to thinking in 
economic terms to growing demands that 
they do so are neatly and humorously 
classified. Students, faculty, and academic 
administrators are not spared, either. Line 
concludes with an apt reminder that an 
economic and systematic approach to librar-
ianship is essential if we are to achieve our 
ultimate purpose of providing the best pos-
sible service to library users.-Robert L. 
Burr, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash-
ington. 

American Library Association. Collection 
Development Committee. Guidelinea.. for 
Collection Development. David Perkins, 
editor. Chicago: American Library Assn., 
1979. 78p. $5. LC 79-16971. ISBN 
0-8389-3231-2. 
Budgetary constraints and a growth in re-

source sharing have given libraries the im-
petus to establish new collection policies or 

Recent Publications I 169 

to revise old ones. This valuable publication 
brings together four guidelines that will 
greatly assist in this process. Task forces 
within the Resources Section of ALA's Re-
sources and Technical Services Division 
(RTSD) have worked on these guidelines 
since 197 4; librarians will find the 
guidelines well worth the wait. 

The "Guidelines for the Formulation of 
Collection Development Policies" give a 
general overview of the need for clearly 
written policies and also present detailed 
suggestions on specifics to include in the 
policy, suc.h as levels of collecting and lan-
guage codes. The guidelines recommend 
that analysis of collecting by subject field be 
broken down by detailed Library of Con-
gress class; the specific breakdown into sub-
divisions used in the comparative shelflist 
measurement project is included in the 
appendixes. 

The "Guidelines for the Evaluation of the 
Effectiveness of Library Collections;, list 
methods to use to determine if the collec-
tion is actually meeting the library's goals. 
Specific evaluation methods are listed, along 
with the pros and cons of each. 

The "Guidelines for the Review of Li-
brary Collections" provide · recommendations 
on ways to select items for discard, storage, 
or preservation. 

And the "Guidelines for the Allocation of 
Library Materials Budgets" list factors to 
consider in budget allocation, methods to 
use, and a description of allocation by for-
mula. A citation to, and description of, for-
mulas proposed by McGrath, Dillehay, 
Gold, Kohut, and Pierce are given in the 
appendix. 

Bibliographies compiled by three of the 
task forces are included, plus a separate, 
annotated list of items on collection de-
velopment policies that was compiled by a 
special committee of the California Library 
Association. Although the annotations are 
helpful, this one section of the bibliography 
is older and lacks some important citations. 
(The excellent articles on collection de-
velopment that appeared in the Winter 
1979 issue of Library Resources & Technical 
Services are too recent. to be included in the 
bibliography.; they complement these 
guidelines and should be read with them.) 

These guidelines, especially the one on