College and Research Libraries tion to the process of markup, as always emphasizing the decisions to be made, and provides useful examples of the ways in which thoughtful markup can aid analysis of a text. Robinson has gone to some effort to ensure that these books are up to date (e.g., working from a proof copy of the most recent revision of the TEl Guide- lines), and even Digitization (completed in summer 1993) shows little sign of age a year later. A major reason for this is Robinson's success at identifying the emerging standards for treatment of electronic materials. His books are use- ful introductions to the issues, whatever decisions the reader may make about a particular project. They are of special importance for librarians, who have to worry about more than the needs of one project or about who will want to buy a CD-ROM this year. By urging scholars and publishers to use standardized for- mats, librarians can provide users with standard interfaces for many different da- tabases, reduce their investment in hard- ware and software, and, perhaps most importantly, ensure that the best of today' s scholarship is available tomorrow, so that we do not have to redigitize or retag hun- dreds of thousands of images and pages of manuscript because we can no longer in- terpret them.-James Campbell, Univer- sity of Virginia, Charlottesville. Chartier, Roger. The Order of Books: Read- ers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe be- tween the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Translated by Lydia G. Co- chrane. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Pr., 1994. 126p. alk. paper, $35 (ISBN 0- 8047-2266-8). At first glance, Chartier's new book would seem to be of extraordinary inter- est to academic librarians who like to explore the theoretical underpinnings of their profession. We recognize in the author's name a historian of ideas whose chief focus is the history of books and reading. The word order in its title offers provocative layers of meaning, whether applied to individual texts, to book pro- duction, to library shelves, to bibliog- raphies. The enticing titles of the three Book Reviews 569 essays comprising the text read "Commu- nities of Readers," "Figures of the Author," and "Libraries without Walls." The twenty- one pages of footnotes refer to a wide range of studies in various languages that one might wish to follow up. In the essays, originally published in French in 1992, Chartier questions, elu- cidates, and theorizes about ideas put forth by himself and others on such sub- jects as the relationships between text, print, and reader; changing perceptions of the connection between author and text, literary property, and censorship; and the various meanings of library (bib- ยท liotheque) as space, compilation/ conden- sation, or book catalog. As might be expected, many of his examples or expli- cations originate out of early modern French culture; for instance, in two of the essays he contrasts Bibliotheques by La Croix du Maine (published in Paris in 1584) and by Du Verdier (published in Lyons in 1585). The essays are ostensibly tied together by a preface and an epi- logue, which obliquely suggest what may be the author's taking-off point: Chartier's restating of the "complex, subtle, shifting relationships" between books and their readers in earlier times as a paradigm for his uneasy coming to terms with the world of electronic texts. In the first essay Chartier emphasizes how meanings of texts depend upon the forms in which they reach readers. Put- ting the French text of his own book beside the English confirms this point all too ironically. The English-printed and designed in Great Britain although pub- lished in this country-is presented with large, clumsy, poorly spaced type. The eight plates (nine in the French) have been unsettlingly resized as well. The appendix containing valuable original language versions of translations within the French text is replaced by an index in the English version. The French version includes a note on Chartier's scholarly interests and a list of his previous books, neither of which is carried over into the English. Within the text Roger Chartier himself refers to the essays as a "few reflections" or "historian's musings" (les detours his- 570 College & Research Libraries toriens). They do inspire the reader to set aside the book and muse, although per- haps not come to any conclusions. If you find the content of The Order of Books elusive and its style opaque, you are not alone.-Elizabeth Swaim, Wesleyan Uni- versity, Middletown, Conn. Graham, Gordon. As I Was Saying: Es- says on the International Book Business. London: Hans Zell, 1994 (distr. in the United States by Reed Reference Pub- lishing). 255p. $28 (ISBN 1-87383- 601-1). This volume gathers together the idi- osyncratic essays of Gordon Graham, a prominent figure in the Anglo-American publishing community for over four decades, having played leading roles at McGraw-Hill and Butterworths. Al- though no bibliography is presented, the book cover describes the essays as the "distillation and updating" of Graham's "articles and speeches." The author re- veals in his foreword only that "some of the source material" for the collection has been previously published in venues such as Publishers Weekly and The Book- seller. He suggests that what he has done here is to reconsider his earlier writings, to engage in an "exercise in distillation" and in "third thoughts" on previously visited themes. In an admission typical of Graham's blend of blunt honesty, irony, glibness, and often frustrating contradictions, he admits impishly that he has not sought permission to have these essays republished. Yet he never reveals whether it was necessary to seek such permission, and we are never sure if anything here had, in fact, been pre- viously published. Given that much of this book focuses on questions of copy- right and publishing practice, this minor point of confusion is a forewarning of slippery footing ahead. The format of the collection is not con- ducive to a clear view into the world of publishing. The chapters are thematic, with no evident overarching organiza- tion or line of development. The themes range from broad topics such as "nation- alism and publishing" and "the electronic manifestation" (electronic publishing) to elements of the book publishing system November 1994 such as "librarians," "booksellers," and "authors," and to practical matters such as "prices" and "missions and fairs." The diversity does not end there. The essays and mini-essays making up each chapter are not titled; rather, they are each preceded by a location and date, which the author tells us, curiously, are there to remind the reader that the topics are "timeless and placeless, but that there are occasions when one must at- tempt snapshots." Sometimes the places and dates fix an experience; sometimes they have little intrinsic relationship to what is being presented. And there is more. The chapters end with self-con- scious "interludes"-set off in italics- that Graham inserts to "make sure that neither the author nor the readers take themselves or their work too seriously or too narrowly." These range from hu- morous to puffy, while on the whole adding another element of disruption to a generally disjointed set of texts. Despite the many twists and turns in As I Was Saying, one theme seems con- tinually to underpin the author's convic- tions, even if it is not always capable of linking up his essays: the notion that publishers, booksellers, librarians, and authors work in interdependent com- munities. A corollary that pops up in Graham's wry observations is that many of the problems separating these com- munities might be solved to some de- gree if they recognized their common causes and communicated more often in terms of their mutual interests. Readers of College & Research Libraries will be in- terested in seeing this theme presented most forcefully in the chapter devoted to librarians. Indeed, the theme of this chapter is really the interdependence of publishers, booksellers, librarians, and authors within . the book world, rather than librarians or librarianship. Gra- ham's remarks on topics such as bibliog- raphies and bibliographic publishing in this chapter (in the essay under "Stock- holm 1990") are superficial and mislead- ing. Librarians are advised to resist the urge to read about themselves. A more useful strategy for reading the book is k search out the many stimulating re-