College and Research Libraries lent thinking are safely consumable by only more seasoned research librarians. Smith's thoughtful observations and analyses of academic research librarian- ship in a changing context are drawn from experience, knowledge, and reason in an effort to illuminate a successful likely fu- ture for research librarianship. Naive and overly optimistic in some instances, realis- tic and highly rational in most others, Smith's book offers critical insights into the current status of research librarianship and a carefully designed matrix through which to contemplate the future. -Charles B. Osburn, University of Alabama, Tusca- loosa, Alabama. Understanding the Business of Library Acquisitions. Ed. by Karen Schmidt. Chicago: American Library Assn., 1990. 332p. $29.95 paper. (ISBN 0- 8389-05636-6). LC 90-33772. Karen Schmidt's compilation of eigh- teen essays on the business aspects of acquisitions seems ideally suited for ac- ademic li.brarians with acquisitions re- sponsibilities for North American and Western European imprints in a large research collection. For one thing, all or all but one of the fourteen contributors who are librarians are in academic or research libraries, and the publishers and vendors who are represented sup- ply that market. There is consequently more here on different kinds of materials than on dif- ferent kinds of libraries: the focus is on materials and First-World sources for ac- ademic libraries. One does not find a discussion of lease/purchase as a means of acquiring bestsellers or an analysis of the cost effectiveness of library bindings for children's literature. The only treat- ment government publications receive is devoted to Western European documents. Acquisitions, as treated in this anthol- ogy, is narrowly conceived. The editor's introduction seems to exclude such al- legedly peripheral aspects as relations with collection development in budget formation. Nor is there extended discus- sion of relevant aspects of automated acquisitions systems (though there is more than the index would indicate). Book Reviews 305 Such a discussion would perhaps re- quire so much detail as to exceed the bounds of this or any monograph. What we do have is a division of the field into five parts: "The Publishing In- dustry, Domestic and Foreign" ("for- eign" here meaning Western Europe), "Vendors," "Out-of-Print and Second- hand Markets, Domestic and Foreign" (not only are exchanges sandwiched in here, but also current imprints from Aus- tralia, New Zealand and Oceania, per- haps because they stay in print so briefly), "Non print Publications," and fi- nally "Methods of Accounting and Busi- ness Practices." "Business," here, means first-and last-money. The initial con- tributions from publishers' and vendors' representatives start out defensively on the question of ever-rising costs, while the final part ends with a discussion of "Payment Ethics." The contributions are of several differ- ent types. The for-profit world of publish- ers and vendors contributes articles that are fairly free of any reference to the liter- ature. Some, such as ''The Business of Pub- lishing," by Kathy Flanagan (director of marketing and sales for what is now known as a publishing group), read like good textbooks. The article is complete with tables and charts (some unneces- sary), which, as she herself indicates, raise printing costs. A scientific publisher's li- brary sales manager supplies a general essay with the usual hopeful conclusion about "fostering better understanding" among the "triangle" of publishers, ven- dors, and libraries. But one feels one's teeth grind on reading her cheery affirma- tion that "when a direct mail piece or tele- phone sales call comes just at the right moment, that is, when the product offered and the price quoted are agreeable to the librarian, a sale can be made .... " Many of the pieces from librarians serve more as practical handbooks, usually with lists of basic references and sources at the end. Such are Joan Grant's contribution on approval plans; Joan Mancell Hayes' quick guide to acquiring special formats (though not CD-ROMs); the essay by William Schenck on accounting and auditing; Corrie Marsh's treatment of payment ethics; and 306 College & Research Libraries the worthwhile contributions to Part Three on out-of-print material, gifts and ex- change, and the Australian-New Zealand book trade, by Margaret Landesman, Mae Oark, and Juliet Flesch, respectively. Marion Reid offers a survey of the lit- erature on vendor evaluation, and Jana Stevens performs a similar literature sur- vey on the pricing systems prevalent in Europe. The chapter by James Campbell on the Western European book trade is. a useful, informative hybrid of literature survey and handbook. At the core of Gay Dannelly's rambling essay on vendor se- lection is a series of hard-nosed questions that should be posed and, if possible, an- swered in choosing a vendor. But before getting to this useful guidance, one has to wade through misplaced library humor and such high school debating techniques as a dictionary definition of selling and the use of quotations to bolster the au- thority of common sense observations. In the only piece of original research in the volume, Donna Goehner reports the results of a survey on vendor relations. Some of the essays go into detail that is not strictly necessary for acquisitions purposes. Such is the case with the in- teres~ing pieces by Campbell and Charles Forrest; the latter mentions li- braries only in passing and acts primar- ily as background for the contribution by Hayes. Conversely, there are intrachapter repe- titions and some overlap between pairs of contributions on certain topics. Presum- ably, library acquisitions is not a subject like Renaissance art, where diverging para- digms need to be taken into account; and much of the repetition here is of the non- dialectical sort. Thus, some of the detail, particularly the helpful summary table in Stevens' chapter on European book pric- ing, could have been folded into Campbell's discussion of the same sub- ject. Betsy Kruger's clear presentation of accounting methods and the following contribution by Schenck cover much the same material, with a slight difference in emphasis; they could well have been merged and abridged. In short, greater editorial economy could have been exer- cised in putting the book together. May 1991 I have recommended this book to Euro- pean vendors, not so much for what it might tell them about their own trade, but for what they can learn from it about North American librarians' expectations. Many of the chapters have excellent references and can serve as introductions or refreshers to beleaguered part- and full-time acquisi- tions librarians, whether so titled or not- Jeffry Larson, Yale University Library, Neu; Haven, Connecticut. N aura til, Marcia J. The Alienated Librar- ian. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989. 129p. acid-free, $35 (ISBN 0- 313-25996-8) The concept of burnout was born in the early 1970s, its heritage embedded in the ideas and efforts of Herbert Freudenberger in New York and Christina Maslach and Ayala Pines in California. Today, while there is some doubt regard- ing the true extent of the burnout syn- drome, there can be no doubt regarding the ubiquity of the word itself. The term is both widely used and used in an ex- traordinarily wide variety of contexts. Over the years, burnout has often been discussed and written about in relation to librarianship and librarians. Indeed, librarian burnout has been the focus of numerous journal articles as well as con- ference programs. Nauratil's book con- tinues to advance the proposition that librarian burnout can be seen from a va- riety of perspectives because the prob- lem is experienced and interpreted in many ways. Nauratil joins others who have posed questions about the nature of and relationship between job satisfac- tion and burnout, both in terms of their causal and consequential elements, and librarianship. The book offers a com- prehensive perspective on the phenom- ena of burnout, work, and alienation, as well as a critical perspective on these phenomena as they pertain to librarian- ship. Nauratil provides an overview of burnout theory and symptomatology. She explores the meaning of work in Western society and traces the history of burnout among blue- and white-collar workers. The emergence of burnout