College and Research Libraries ing but he never examined the library tech- nician training programs, which exist for just that purpose. Conant advocates a two- year program but ignored the experience of the Canadian library schools (accredited by the COA), which have been giving a two- year MLS program for about a-decade now. Library schools are professional schools, but Conant never investigated the degree to which the criticisms he heard made of li- brary schools paralleled or differed from those leveled at other professional schools. Last, I complain strongly about the inept- ness or carelessness of the presentation it- self. The book is badly misproportioned, with the key first chapter being far too brief to make its point and the interview reports given three times the space they warrant. There are no bibliographical citations what- soever. The bibliography is so lamentably incomplete (e.g., it does not include Dan- ton's major study on sixth-year programs) as to suggest that Conant was not well in- formed about previous studies on his sub- ject. The index is simply laughable; for ex- ample, there are entries under "graduate library schools" and "gatekeepers of the profession" but none under "library schools" or "librarianship." There are typos aplenty and some outright unintelligibilities. Why, for example, would Conant's model curricu- lum include--as required courses, no less- such topics as "serial files maintenance" and "reproduction" (p.179)? Even the printer has nodded over this book-there are at least seven instances ·of text being badly misaligned on the page! I spoke at the outset of the hopes and fears that attended the publication of the Conant Report. My judgment is that nei- ther emotion is warranted by this dis- appointing study. The Williamson report for the 1980s remains to be written.-Samuel Rothstein, The University of British Co- lumbia, Vancouver. Slater, Margaret. Career Patterns and the Occupational Image: A Study of the Li- brary/Information Field. Occasional Pub- lication no.23. London: Aslib, 1979. 334p. UK £18 (£15 Aslib members); overseas £22.50 (£18. 75 Aslib members). ISBN. 0- 85142-122-9. Margaret Slater has gathered a Recent Publications I 535 tremendous amount of statistical data for this study of the library/information pro- fession in Great Britain. Her goal was to de- scribe career patterns set in the context of the professional image as perceived by em- ployer, librarian, and the general public. To do this she analyzed 307 organization charts and surveyed 1, 770 unit heads and 303 members of the profession as well as 100 members of the general public. A less for- mal evaluation of the public image was gleaned from the media as mirrored in books, films, advertising, and pornography. A profile of the librarian/information officer in Great Britain emerges from this study. Women predominate in the pro- fession (63 percent were women). The aver- age age was 37.6 and the average length of time in their current job was 5.5 years. Job satisfaction was surprisingly low. Asked if they would choose the same career if they were given a hypothetical second chance, only 47 percent said yes. The patterns of mobility delineated in the study were representative of the year 1977. Slater found that mobility in the profession was sluggish, with only a 16 percent turn- over rate. Curiously, only 45 percent of the libraries surveyed had any turnover at all. Unit heads, asked to conjecture about the reasons for staff departures, identified domestic commitments, the desire for bet- ter jobs, and return to school as the primary factors. Although the image of librarians is a re- curring topic for research, Slater fails to compare her findings with many earlier studies on the subject. However stale the topic, her approach is novel and the study reveals some interesting facts. She asked members of the library profession and the general public to place about twenty occupations in rank order from the most im- portant to the least important. Librarians were ranked similarly by the profession and the general public, about twelfth out of the twenty. Despite this apparent agreement, Slater concludes from her survey and her impress- ionistic appraisal of the image of librarians · in the media that there is a divergence be- tween the profession's self-image and the public's perception of librarians. Librarians view themselves as a people-directed com- 536 I College & Research Libraries • N ovemb~r 1980 munication and education profession. Their patrons, on the other hand, regard them as aloof, pedantic document shuffiers. She be- lieves this negative image has changed little in eighty years despite major changes in the profession during that time. Although the - study was creatively de- signed, the analysis of the statistical findings lacks depth. The scope of the topic is so broad that some aspects are treated super- ficially. Sampling techniques are inad- equately described, and there is not enough comparison from chapter to chapter. The writing style is conversational ("Tough luck for ex-librarian M urn who fears she may be turning into a cabbage"), which adds some zest to the dry statistics, but the author uses too much jargon to suit this reviewer (e.g., "negative feedback loop mode of op- eration" and "terminological scatter"). Quotes from punk rock singers and a bizar- re restyling of Shakespeare's life are exam- ples of some of the incongruous inter- jections in this study. Numerous typo- graphical errors contribute to the impres- sion that the study was published too quickly in an effort to keep it timely. Despite these criticisms, the book does contain much to fascinate those interested in the topic.- ]anet L. Ashley, State University of New York, College at Oneonta. · Johnson, Edward R., and Mann, Stuart H. Organization Development for Academic Libraries: An Evaluation of the Manage- ment Review and Analysis Program. Con- tributions in Librarianship and Informa- tion Science, no.28. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1980. 199p. $19.95. LC 79-8289. ISBN 0-313-21373-9. ISSN 0084- 0243. "Know thy library" and make it better is the basic premise of the Management Re- view and Analysis Program (MRAP). A program that is now nearing the end of a decade of almost constant evolvement, MRAP is sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and assisted principally by grants from the Council of Library Re- sources, Inc. (CLR). Since little about the program has appeared in the literature, MRAP, a freely chosen, self-evaluation pro- cess, and its participants have acquired an unnecessary mystique. This compact and judicious volume at last takes the "wraps" off MRAP. The research core of the book was sup- ported by a grant from CLR. One of its two authors, Edward Johnson, served as chair- person of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries MRAP Study Team, and after "several thousand man-hours of intense and sometimes frustrating work" in using MRAP thought its overall impact worth examining. His co-investigator was Stuart Mann, a pro- fessor of operations research at Penn State with an interest in library operations. Their statitical analyses and careful, almost under- stated assessments add definite credence to · the study. A brief but helpful explanation of plan- ning and organization development (O.D), itself a growing influence on libraries, con- stitutes chapters 2 and 3, including a useful outline of earlier self-studies at Columbia, Cornell, and Chicago. Duane Webster, in- defatigable director of ARL' s Office of Man- agement Studies (OMS) and responsible for MRAP' s development, describes it in chap- ter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 provide the methods and quantitative summaries analyz- ing MRAP' s impact on libraries and staff. Chapter 7 presents conclusions and recom- mendations. Appendixes include examples of questionnaires used. By the beginning date of the study (May 1976), twenty-two research and university libraries had undergone MRAP. Three- Iowa State, Purdue, and Tennessee-par- ticipated in the pilot operation designed to test the program starting in August 1972. From this and later groups Johnson and Mann selected ten libraries for the most in- tensive phase of the study, a decision based on finances and time. They note some directors declined to participate or did not respond; they also recognize this may have had a biasing effect on the results. Ques- tionnaires (with remarkable return rates), face-to-face interviews, and Delphi panels of participants were all part of the techniques utilized. Self-assessment is an appealing, if easily criticized process and promises to continue as a standard for libraries. Nevertheless, as the authors point out, it is time consuming and requires a conscious, clear appraisal- and no small dash of courage-before in-