College and Research Libraries Recent Publications COLLEGE & RESEARCH LIBRARIES Comparable Worth : Issues and Alternatives, reviewed by Tina Kass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Personnel Policies in Libraries , reviewed by Sheila Creth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Justin Winsor: Scholar-Librarian, reviewed by Edwin E . Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258 Organizing the Library's Support: Donors, Volunteers, Friends, reviewed by Leslie Parker H u1ne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 Getz, Malcolm. Public Libraries: An Economic View , reviewed by Ellen Altman . . . . 261 Studies in Creative Partnership: Federal Aid to Public Libraries during the New Deal , reviewed by R. Kathleen Molz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Closing the Catalog: Proceedings of the 1978 and 1979 Library and Infonnation Tech- nology Association Institutes, reviewed by Frederick C. Lynden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 The Making of a Code: The Issues Underlying AACR2, reviewed by Tina Kass . . . . . . 265 Maxwell , Margaret F . · Handbook for AACR2: Explaining and Illustrating Anglo- American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, reviewed by Tina Kass ......... ; . . 265 Roper, Fred W., and Boorkman, JoAnne . Introduction to Reference Sources i11 the Health Sciences, reviewed hy Elizabeth Sawyers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 SantaVicca, Edmund F. Reference Work in the Humanities, reviewed by George V. Hodowanec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources. ERIC Basics; a Sound/Microfiche In- structional Package, reviewed by Jean W. Farrington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Library Instruction and Faculty Development: Growth Opportunities in the Academic Community, reviewed by Wendy Pradt Lougee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Renford , Beverly, and Hendrickson , Linnea. Bibliographic Instruction: A Handbook, reviewed by Mary W. George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 The I...ibrary and Information Manager's Guide to Online Services, reviewed hy Danuta A. Nitecki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 Ammal Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 1.5 , 1980, reviewed hy Larry X. Besant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 "Online Issue." IATUL Proceedings , V.12, 1980, reviewed by Ryan E. Hoover . . . . . . 274 Abstracts .. ............... : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 Other Publications of Interest to Academic Librarians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 BOOK REVIEWS Comparable· Worth: Issues and Alternatives. Edited by E. Robert Livernash. Washing- ton, D.C.: Equal Employment Advisory Council, 1980. 260p. $21.00; $14.95 EEAC members. LC 80-67644. ISBN 0-937856-01-0. A policy of "comparable worth" may be defined as one that compensates employees equally, not only for jobs that are equal or substantially equal as mandated in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also for jobs that can be shown to be of comparable value to an employer. It suggests that it is possible to compare dissimilar jobs by iso- lating and evaluating components such as level of skill required, responsibility car- ried, and so on. Supporters of comparable worth assume that implementation of such a policy would be an important step toward reducing job discrimination, particularly against women. Comparable Worth: Issues and Alterna- tives presents a strong argument against the concept of comparable worth, which rests on two basic premises. First, that compara- ble worth has not been ~efined in oper- ational terms and it appears that it will be difficult to accomplish this in the near future; and second, that comparabl~ worth does not take into account market factors that are the basis · fo~ wage setting and efficient op- I 255 256 I CoUege & Research Libraries • May 1981 Now we've added citations to books and dissertations to HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS-the researcher's guide to articles from more than 2000 journals in history and related disciplines published worldwide. You'll find information faster and miss fewer pertinent entries with the HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS Subject Profile Index (ABC-SPindex). All citations are subject and author indexed. for online searching, you'll find HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS through Lockheed's DIALOG ® fiLt: 39. find out more about HISTORICAL ABSTRACTS subscriptions. Call (805) 963-7737 or write: ABC ( .\)Dept CRL58L Box 4397 CLIO fM Santa Barbara, CA 93103 eration of the free market in the United States. The study was funded by a grant from the Business Roundtable and, not sur- prisingly, consistently supports existing compensation practices and warns against the chaos that contributors are certain will result from any movement toward putting into practice a policy of comparable worth. Contributed papers address the value of job evaluation, stating that its purpose is only partly to analyze jobs and compensate work- ers fairly and therefore it cannot be used as the basis for determining the worth of jobs (Schwab); point out that other countries are not dealing with this issue (Bellace); assert that there are always quantifiable reasons for differences in pay between men as a group and women as a group (Robert); insist that as more women move up into manage- rial ranks, the problem of apparently in- equitable wages for women as a group will disappear (Milkovich) ; and, finally , state that any attempt to implement a policy of comparable worth will result in "regulatory quagmire" (Williams and McDowell). Of special interest is the conclusion by George Hildebrand that if "in a full burst of passion for what its proponents would call social justice, the wage differentials be- tween 'male' and 'female ' jobs are slashed so that female jobs are increased even as much as 50 percent relative to comparable male occupations," there would be an inevitable increase in unem"ployment and welfare costs. This is because such a policy would have the greatest effect on "low productiv- ity" workers, that is, women , by raising the pri~e of such workers to the point that em- ployers would not be able to afford them and would therefore "disemploy" them. Hil- debrand concludes: ". . . economic theory tells us that if comparable work is put into effect (1 ) unemployment rates for females will rise , (2) unemployment of females also will rise, (3) the major victims will be the poorest female workers , (4) welfare dependency will grow, (5) female youngsters will be large los- ers of job opportunities , and (6) there will be some withdrawal of discouraged women workers from the labor force, precisely because official policy, in the purposed service of a peculiar con- cept of social justice, will have destroyed their jobs for them, despite their own efforts to be pro- ductive and self-supporting citizens. " There are undoubtedly many ways to support arguments on either side of this controversy. The most disturbing aspect of this book, however, is its primary assump- tion that there is currently no problem that time and the good motives of employers won't solve. Such a condescending, even paternalisitic, view of a situation in which women's salaries on the whole remain at 57 percent of men's salaries, and in which the largest proportion of both women and men will always remain in the service, clerical, or maintenance categories of employment, is appalling. The implications of this view for librarians are clear. Despite what librarians perceive as a profession in which individual jobs are complex and demanding in terms of re- quired skills and levels of responsibility, the typical characterization of librarianship as a woman's profession continues to have a negative effect on the salaries that librarians can expect to earn over the course of their careers. The debate over comparable worth is just beginning, and it will be important for librarians interested in fair and equitable compensation practices in their own profes- sion as well as in the labor market as a whole to be aware of both sides of the issue. Comparable Worth presents only one side.-Tina Kass, Research Libraries Group, Stanford, California. Personnel Policies in Libraries. Edited by Nancy Patton Van Zant. New York: Neal- Schuman, 1980. 334p. $19.95. LC 80- 11734. ISBN 0-918212-26-X. This publication of sample personnel poli- cies is intended, according to the author, to provide assistance to those who are faced with the "formidable task of writing a per- sonnel policy in the absence of good exam- ples." Unfortunately, the approach and the content of this book are unlikely to encour- age either "good" policies or even the de- velopment of written policies. It fails to do an adequate job of explaining why written personnel policies are necessary to effective library administration, nor does it include · any evaluation of the sample policies. The book has two major focuses: the first, a summary of survey results from a ques- tionnaire on personnel policies, and the second, the reprinting of sample personnel Recent Publications I 251 policies. The survey questionnaire was de- veloped to query public and academic li- braries on the extent of their written poli- cies and to identifY the specific areas of per- sonnel in which policies existed. Question- naires were mailed to over 1,300 pu,blic and 1,000 academic libraries with 510 usable questionnaires returned from the former and 416 from the latter. The section of the book entitled "Survey" is an analysis of the in- formation obtained from these question- naires. An immediate problem in under- standing the survey results is with the broad question: "Does the library have a written personnel policy which defines li- brarians' rights and their conditions of employment? ... " The implication, then, is that the survey is directed toward policies for only one group of employees-librar- ians-even though following survey ques- tions are addressed to policies affecting "li- brary employees." For instance, the ques- tion on performance evaluation is: "Are li- brary employees given performance evalua- tions?" Does this question refer to all li- brary employees or only to the librarians re- ferred to in the broad survey question? This is not simply nit-picking since most libraries have different policies for professional and support staff. Therefore it is important to know when reading the survey results and later the sample policies whether the in- formation applies to all staff or only to li- brarians. The bulk of the book, though, is devoted not to the survey results or general informa- tion on personnel policies, but to the sam- ple personnel policies reprinted from public and academic libraries. The policies are pre- sented in two formats. The first set of poli- cies consists of the complete personnel poli- cies of four libraries-one academic and three public. The second group of poli- cies-organized by personnel topics such as selection of staff, working conditions, em- ployee benefits, and so forth-includes selections from numerous libraries. The au- . thor justifies the inclusion of the four com- prehensive policies by commenting that they "provide reasonably thorough coverage · of issues associated with the particular type and size of library" though none of this rel- evant information is provided to the reader. Indeed, no information on the libraries that