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English and American literature: Sources and strategies for collection development
462
Books on Library
Acquisition:
The Review Section
English and American Literature: Sources and Strategies for Collection Development. Edited by William McPheron, Stephen Lehmann, Craig Likness, and Marcia Pankake. ACRL Publications in Librarianship no. 45. Chicago: American Library Association, 1987. xii, 217 pp. $30.00. ISBN o-8389-0476-9. This collection of ten essays and an introductory overview covers most of the important aspects of selection for English and American literature collections: the techniques of selection and acquisitions, the nature of reference collections and the kinds of scholarly tools, past and contemporary literature, serials, audiovisuals and special collections. There is a good mix here of common professional wisdom and individual views and styles, of practical advice and general principles, of ideas about university research libraries and about college libraries. Most helpful because they take us into the heart of literary collections and provide the most information about selection practice and tools are the essays by Heinzkill (retrospective collection development), Brownson (current literature), and Lehmann (basic tools of selection). An index increases usability. Combined with a textbook on collection development, as well as ALA’s Selection of Library Materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences (1985), this will serve new bibliographers well. Acquisitions librarians might profit most from the chapters by Lehmann, Heinzkill, and Brownson on selection tools, Natoli on literary editions, Stebelman on reference books, and Ryan on the integral role of special collections. There are, however, some omissions that beginners should be aware of. There should be a clearer explanation of the differing needs of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and of recreational and serious but non-disciplinary readers; a discussion of the appropriate balance among allocations for books and periodicals, primary and secondary materials, the needs of various categories of users; a greater appreciation for the crucial place of periodicals, both as a source of literary texts (contemporary little magazines, the great nineteenth century reviews) and now as the prime medium of critical exchange. Further, it is a mistake not to put collection development into the larger context of collection management, in which issues such as cooperative collection development, access to non-owned material, availability, collection maintenance and preservation are as important as selection. 1 would have liked a more explicit discussion of the nature of literary collections, the kinds of users and uses they serve, the complex context they exist in (literary universe, institution, department, program, course, faculty, student-each with complementary and competing expectations and needs), and the ways bibliographers have of defining and building the individual character of their collections. But this is not the book in hand, and it is not entirely fair to go on about what it might have been, except to regret the lack of larger ambition on the part of those who conceived it. Might they not have commissioned someone-one of these authors perhaps-to write the whole thing, subject to their editorial advice? One great virtue of the book is that there is everything here for a synthesizing view, despite editor McPheron’s reluctance to proffer a “single, unifed philosophy of collection development” (p. vi) and despite the scatter inherent in a collective volume. Given that there are different situations-kinds of institutions, categories of users and of user needs and abilities, levels of collections-and that each collection has its own character, it is nevertheless true that the nature of literature collections in academic libraries and our obligations as managers are uniform. Literary texts are complex and dynamic; literary collections must document the ways they are so. Ryan points out that special collections seek to document the stages of literary production (p. 184), and surely this is the goal of all literary collections. Natoli explains how modern textual study has shown texts to be a collaborative process, impossible to reduce to a single, so-called definitive edition. The variety of literature recorded
Books on Library
Acquisition:
The Review Section
463
in the standard bibliographies cited by Heinzkill and living in the publications championed by Brownson, and the variety of scholarly interests seen in the reference tools Stebelman describes or the critical approaches McPheron reminds us of stretch the boundaries of the discipline but do not alter its core: literary research and study have a consistency. We must try, then, to collect literature in multiple versions, in a variety of types of editions, representing writing from the traditional canon as well as from women, Blacks and ethnic minorities, regionalists, popular genres, and ideological camps, with special attention, in the case of contemporary writing, to little magazines and independent publishers and, in the case of past writing, to periodicals and the editions over which authors had some editorial control, as well as to whatever evidence (biographical, financial, social, etc.) remains of the collaborations that helped produce the text as published and read. The local situation will determine which writers and genres to collect and the breadth, depth, balance, and emphases of the collection, but the nature of collections will be the same. Knowing this, it is up to individual bibliographers to devise and carry out a collection management plan that implements institutional policies, recognizes users’ needs and abilities, and develops and maintains the local collection’s individual character. William A. Wortman Humanities Librarian, King Library Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056
Books on Library
Acquisition:
The Review Section
English and American Literature: Sources and Strategies for Collection Development. Edited by William McPheron, Stephen Lehmann, Craig Likness, and Marcia Pankake. ACRL Publications in Librarianship no. 45. Chicago: American Library Association, 1987. xii, 217 pp. $30.00. ISBN o-8389-0476-9. This collection of ten essays and an introductory overview covers most of the important aspects of selection for English and American literature collections: the techniques of selection and acquisitions, the nature of reference collections and the kinds of scholarly tools, past and contemporary literature, serials, audiovisuals and special collections. There is a good mix here of common professional wisdom and individual views and styles, of practical advice and general principles, of ideas about university research libraries and about college libraries. Most helpful because they take us into the heart of literary collections and provide the most information about selection practice and tools are the essays by Heinzkill (retrospective collection development), Brownson (current literature), and Lehmann (basic tools of selection). An index increases usability. Combined with a textbook on collection development, as well as ALA’s Selection of Library Materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences (1985), this will serve new bibliographers well. Acquisitions librarians might profit most from the chapters by Lehmann, Heinzkill, and Brownson on selection tools, Natoli on literary editions, Stebelman on reference books, and Ryan on the integral role of special collections. There are, however, some omissions that beginners should be aware of. There should be a clearer explanation of the differing needs of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and of recreational and serious but non-disciplinary readers; a discussion of the appropriate balance among allocations for books and periodicals, primary and secondary materials, the needs of various categories of users; a greater appreciation for the crucial place of periodicals, both as a source of literary texts (contemporary little magazines, the great nineteenth century reviews) and now as the prime medium of critical exchange. Further, it is a mistake not to put collection development into the larger context of collection management, in which issues such as cooperative collection development, access to non-owned material, availability, collection maintenance and preservation are as important as selection. 1 would have liked a more explicit discussion of the nature of literary collections, the kinds of users and uses they serve, the complex context they exist in (literary universe, institution, department, program, course, faculty, student-each with complementary and competing expectations and needs), and the ways bibliographers have of defining and building the individual character of their collections. But this is not the book in hand, and it is not entirely fair to go on about what it might have been, except to regret the lack of larger ambition on the part of those who conceived it. Might they not have commissioned someone-one of these authors perhaps-to write the whole thing, subject to their editorial advice? One great virtue of the book is that there is everything here for a synthesizing view, despite editor McPheron’s reluctance to proffer a “single, unifed philosophy of collection development” (p. vi) and despite the scatter inherent in a collective volume. Given that there are different situations-kinds of institutions, categories of users and of user needs and abilities, levels of collections-and that each collection has its own character, it is nevertheless true that the nature of literature collections in academic libraries and our obligations as managers are uniform. Literary texts are complex and dynamic; literary collections must document the ways they are so. Ryan points out that special collections seek to document the stages of literary production (p. 184), and surely this is the goal of all literary collections. Natoli explains how modern textual study has shown texts to be a collaborative process, impossible to reduce to a single, so-called definitive edition. The variety of literature recorded
Books on Library
Acquisition:
The Review Section
463
in the standard bibliographies cited by Heinzkill and living in the publications championed by Brownson, and the variety of scholarly interests seen in the reference tools Stebelman describes or the critical approaches McPheron reminds us of stretch the boundaries of the discipline but do not alter its core: literary research and study have a consistency. We must try, then, to collect literature in multiple versions, in a variety of types of editions, representing writing from the traditional canon as well as from women, Blacks and ethnic minorities, regionalists, popular genres, and ideological camps, with special attention, in the case of contemporary writing, to little magazines and independent publishers and, in the case of past writing, to periodicals and the editions over which authors had some editorial control, as well as to whatever evidence (biographical, financial, social, etc.) remains of the collaborations that helped produce the text as published and read. The local situation will determine which writers and genres to collect and the breadth, depth, balance, and emphases of the collection, but the nature of collections will be the same. Knowing this, it is up to individual bibliographers to devise and carry out a collection management plan that implements institutional policies, recognizes users’ needs and abilities, and develops and maintains the local collection’s individual character. William A. Wortman Humanities Librarian, King Library Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056