reviews.indd 280 College & Research Libraries Burgett, James, John Haar, and Linda L. Phillips. Collaborative Collection Development: A Practical Guide for Your Library. Chicago: ALA, 2004. 216p. alk. paper, $42 (ISBN 0838908810). LC 2004-4817. The rising cost of library materials over the past few decades has increased the need for libraries to explore collection- building partnerships. Burgett, Haar, and Phillips have drawn from a large body of literature regarding the numer- ous collaborative collection projects in existence to present a broad overview of collaborative collection development (CCD). They define CCD as “multiple libraries coordinating the development and management of their collections with the goal of building broader, more useful combined collections than any library in the group could build individually.” The problem is threefold. Libraries are dealing with static or decreasing budgets, higher material prices, and more material available for purchase. Although CCD programs have been in existence for many years, current realities have created a greater need for more collaboration; thus, many libraries are currently participat- ing in a CCD program or are seeking to establish new collaborations. Drawing on their experiences as col- lection development leaders in academic libraries and on successful collaborations such as the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) and the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK), the authors set out to provide a practical guide for starting a CCD program. The book begins with an overview of the past, present, and future of CCD, which is fol- lowed by a chapter on the many barriers to and benefits of collaboration. Subse- quent chapters cover the fundamentals of CCD; the numerous varieties of CCD; prerequisites to initiating and sustaining a CCD program; strategies, governance, economics, promotion, publicity, assess- ment, and evaluation of CCD; and the lo- cal creation of sustainable CCD programs. Several sidebars are included that cover a May 2005 wide variety of information ranging from bibliographies for further reading to a list of tools librarians can use to publicize their collaborative programs. Brugett, Haar, and Phillips are par- ticularly effective in providing the reader with an overview of the history and the major players and initiatives that have resulted in the current state of CCD. Major landmarks in CCD, for example, establishment of national scholarly and bibliographic support groups such as the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Center for Research Libraries (CRL), Re- search Libraries Group (RLG), and many international collecting programs such as the Farmington Plan, and the Global Resources Program, are discussed to pro- vide a foundation for future collaborative programs. The purpose of the book is to provide a practical approach to starting a successful CCD program. One drawback is the lack of examples of unsuccessful programs. The text would be more comprehensive if it had covered some of the conse- quences librarians faced when they did not consider some of the issues discussed throughout the book. Due to the extensive amount of his- torical information included, this book might give the impression of being more theoretical or scholarly than practical. The book is not a how-to-do-it, step-by-step outline for starting a CCD program, but it does provide a valuable framework with examples and a discussion of issues that must be considered when starting a CCD program. The authors accomplish their goal of “bringing together in one place the essential components for start- ing and sustaining a collaborative CCD program.” As libraries continually try to balance the reality of less buying power against increases in the quantity and price of materials while simultaneously trying to fulfill their obligations to meet users’ needs, more institutions will find it nec- essary to engage in collaborative collect- ing programs. The authors have made a valuable contribution to the profession by sharing their experiences and condensing the complex issues surrounding collab- orative collection programs into a guide that addresses problems that librarians face daily.—Terry B. Hill, North Carolina State University. Gerits, Anton. Books, Friends, and Biblio- philia: Reminiscences of an Antiquarian Bookseller. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2004. 402p. alk. paper, $65 (ISBN 1584561386). LC 2004-302015. In 1950, when 20-year-old Anton Gerits presented himself in The Hague at the bookshop of Martinus Nijhoff to ask for a job from Wouter Nijhoff Pzn, whose family in 1853 had founded the business, he began a career in the antiquarian book trade that would last until 1996, when he retired from his own business in Am- sterdam, a shop he had opened fifteen years before. During the intervening half-century, Gerits worked two spells at Nijhoff ’s, a “glorious” firm he saw dismantled by Kluwer; spent several years managing the antiquarian department of the publisher Mouton & Co., whom he represented when in the early 1950s Gerits was among the first booksellers from the West to prospect behind the Iron Curtain; put in a short turn at Ludwig Rosenthal’s Anti- quarian Bookshop, where the “neurotic and egocentric” Hilde Rosenthal-Wolf, who furthered his bibliographical edu- cation while undercutting his success in acquiring incunabula, dispatched him in 1973 to Japan, a country that ever after proved fruitful to Gerits; and passed seven years at Dekker & Nordemann, where he directed the fi rm’s international antiquarian department, a short-lived venture established by parent company Elsevier, “as if a very rich man, out of boredom, was spending his money on something new he did not yet possess, just as these people sometimes buy buildings, paintings, old books, or shares.” If Elsevier, Kluwer, and Mrs. Rosen- thal-Wolf caused Gerits some painful Book Reviews 281 moments, he was up to the challenge. In fact, for those readers of this journal who don’t work directly with special collec- tions, the one reason to read this book is to meet Gerits. If he tells some decent stories, Gerits is not a master storyteller. If he witnessed epochal changes in anti- quarian bookselling, he is not a skilled chronicler. What Gerits does offer in this memoir, which is his own translation from the Dutch original, is an entertain- ing portrait of himself, that is, of a man blessed with curiosity, wit, and stubborn- ness, afraid neither to work hard nor to speak his mind, one who began his career as a Nijhoff’s junior assistant and reached the top of his profession when, in 1991, he became president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. Gerits’s earliest years at Nijhoff ’s, 1950–1954, “determined the course of my life.” He learned how to describe and price books from mentors who could recall a pertinent detail from some obscure handbook housed in the Nijhoff catalogue-room and who would ask the apprentice if he had thought to consult it. His chapters on this stage of his career, the book’s best part, are an evocative picture of a midcentury bookshop where the firm’s principals spent their days at adja- cent work tables in a room where books covered the walls and cigar and cigarette smoke filled the air; where books were sent to local customers “on approval” by bicycle; and where Wouter Nijhoff Pzn would review the day’s mail while department heads stood around his table prepared to explain an action, answer a question, or field a complaint. Gerits read catalogs and bibliographies until permitt ed after a year to write his own descriptions. While waiting, he also learned by performing jobs such as carry- ing stacks of books back and forth, gath- ering the letters and bibliographic slips associated with orders, finding space for new acquisitions on the crowded ware- house shelves, and overseeing a search service for titles not in stock. This search service, in fact, the entire business in those