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Reader in library technology
Book reviews
343
the function. This will be a very useful book for teachers of media personnel. Whether it can be a classroom text is debatable. As a teacher I would find it helpful to use elements from the book but would not like the highly structural format as the basis for conducting a course. Perhaps a first time “teacher” might want it as the text since each chapter has exercises and problems for the student. A very nice feature is that for each competency in each chapter there is a brief bibliography. In the last analysis this is not a book to train all media personnel. It is a book to train media professionals. If it is viewed in this light it is very successful; if it is viewed as a tool for training all classes of media personnel, it is a failure. UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARDEVANS
Reader in Library Technology. SHIRLEYGRAYADAMOVICH. Microcard Editions Books, Englewood, Colo., 1975.236~~. $18.75 L.C. # 75-8051 ISBN O-910972-52-4. Number twenty in the Reader Series in Library and Information Science does little to add to the reputation of the editor of the series or of this volume. If anything, this book epitomizes the major flaws in the conception and execution of the series. First, there is the problem of the title; library technology is not the same as library media technical assistants (L/MTA). How anyone, editor or publisher, would allow that discrepancy to pass unnoticed is impossible to determine. The book’s editor makes no attempt to explain the difference in terms. Each of the five major sections deal only with L/MTAs. The major divisions are: Part I Library Technology-Growth and Development; Part II Policies and Criteria for Library Education; Part III Definition and Debate; Part IV Education of the Library Technical Assistant; Part V The Library Technical Assistant at Work. All the parts may sound as if they deal with the broad field of library technology but the only articles are L/MTS articles. Paul Wasserman, the series editor, states in the Foreword “unlike many other academic disciplines, librarianship has not yet begun to exploit the contributions of the several disciplines toward the study of its own issues.. .it is clear that the job of synthesizing the most essential contributions from the elusive sources in which they are contained is overdue.. This then is the rationale for the series. .“. This is a worthwhile purpose but does this volume, much less the whole series, do this? The key words are “the several disciplines”, “synthesize the most essential”, and “elusive sources”. Certainly the mere republishing of 51 journal articles grouped under a few broad headings cannot really pass for synthesis. Nor can one or two paragraphs at the beginning of each major section, prepared by the volume editor, pass for meaningful synthesis. Where then is the synthesis? If we cannot have the promised synthesis perhaps we can have the “essential” “elusive”, “in the several disciplines”, items. Of the 51 articles in this volume only one comes from a journal or report outside the field of librarianship. So much for the several disciplines. What about the elusive sources problem? Again the record is not impressive; ten articles are from Illinois Libraries, six from Special Libraties, five from American LibratieslALA Bulletin, and three from the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. Almost half of the items are from journals that are readily available and certainly could not be called elusive. What of the rest? Some are in journals that may be difficult to locate but all but two items taken from books could be found in Library Literature. One would hope the list of problems could end at this point; unhappily it cannot. Even if you can dismiss the above list of faults as irrelevant, the book conveys an inaccurate message. The message is libraries need hundreds of L/MTAs because of a library manpower shortage. Ms. Adamovich does discuss this problem in two paragraphs in her preface/introduction; unfortunately introduction/prefaces are seldom read carefully. Part of the problem is the preface was written in August 1974; the book published in 1975 and there are only ten articles taken from 1972, 1973 and 1974. If one takes into account the lag time in journal publishing it is easy to account for Ms. Adamovich’s comment “it is interesting to note that after 1972 or so interest in technicians.. . as expressed in periodical articles, falls off sharply” (p. xiii). Given a 12 month lag, 1971 would be the point in time when it became clear there was no manpower shortage. The articles chosen for inclusion are good pieces on the subject and are worth reading whether in this volume or in their original source. Ms. Adamovich knows the field; she has good ideas and understands the problems surrounding L/MTA’s and librarianship. I hope she can find the time, in the near future, to provide the field with a book giving her synthesis and thoughts about this critical issue. She has obviously reviewed the literature critically; she has taught in L/MTA programs; she has employed L/MTAs and she can write, if the preface is any indication; all these factors place her in a special position to produce a very important book on the role of L/MTAs. This book is overpriced for material that is reasonably available. No teacher should require students to buy material that any good teaching library collection can readily supply. UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARDEVANS
Weeding Library Collections. STANLEYJ. SLOTE.Libraries Unlimited (Research Studies in Library Science No. 14). Littleton, Colorado, 1975, 177pp.. glossary, bibliog. index 087287-105-3. Originally the Research Studies series was intended to make available research studies of some but limited interest to the library/information science profession. So far most of the titles in the series have had a much wider appeal than ever expected. Certainly Slote’s book falls into this category. Weeding a collection, or as information scientists are inclined to say-file purging, is a perennial problem. Lazy librarians like lazy gardeners find this problem grows rather than remaining constant during periods of neglect. Because of the need to deal with the problem and the fact that this is the only current book in English on the subject, there has been a lot of interest in the title.
343
the function. This will be a very useful book for teachers of media personnel. Whether it can be a classroom text is debatable. As a teacher I would find it helpful to use elements from the book but would not like the highly structural format as the basis for conducting a course. Perhaps a first time “teacher” might want it as the text since each chapter has exercises and problems for the student. A very nice feature is that for each competency in each chapter there is a brief bibliography. In the last analysis this is not a book to train all media personnel. It is a book to train media professionals. If it is viewed in this light it is very successful; if it is viewed as a tool for training all classes of media personnel, it is a failure. UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARDEVANS
Reader in Library Technology. SHIRLEYGRAYADAMOVICH. Microcard Editions Books, Englewood, Colo., 1975.236~~. $18.75 L.C. # 75-8051 ISBN O-910972-52-4. Number twenty in the Reader Series in Library and Information Science does little to add to the reputation of the editor of the series or of this volume. If anything, this book epitomizes the major flaws in the conception and execution of the series. First, there is the problem of the title; library technology is not the same as library media technical assistants (L/MTA). How anyone, editor or publisher, would allow that discrepancy to pass unnoticed is impossible to determine. The book’s editor makes no attempt to explain the difference in terms. Each of the five major sections deal only with L/MTAs. The major divisions are: Part I Library Technology-Growth and Development; Part II Policies and Criteria for Library Education; Part III Definition and Debate; Part IV Education of the Library Technical Assistant; Part V The Library Technical Assistant at Work. All the parts may sound as if they deal with the broad field of library technology but the only articles are L/MTS articles. Paul Wasserman, the series editor, states in the Foreword “unlike many other academic disciplines, librarianship has not yet begun to exploit the contributions of the several disciplines toward the study of its own issues.. .it is clear that the job of synthesizing the most essential contributions from the elusive sources in which they are contained is overdue.. This then is the rationale for the series. .“. This is a worthwhile purpose but does this volume, much less the whole series, do this? The key words are “the several disciplines”, “synthesize the most essential”, and “elusive sources”. Certainly the mere republishing of 51 journal articles grouped under a few broad headings cannot really pass for synthesis. Nor can one or two paragraphs at the beginning of each major section, prepared by the volume editor, pass for meaningful synthesis. Where then is the synthesis? If we cannot have the promised synthesis perhaps we can have the “essential” “elusive”, “in the several disciplines”, items. Of the 51 articles in this volume only one comes from a journal or report outside the field of librarianship. So much for the several disciplines. What about the elusive sources problem? Again the record is not impressive; ten articles are from Illinois Libraries, six from Special Libraties, five from American LibratieslALA Bulletin, and three from the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. Almost half of the items are from journals that are readily available and certainly could not be called elusive. What of the rest? Some are in journals that may be difficult to locate but all but two items taken from books could be found in Library Literature. One would hope the list of problems could end at this point; unhappily it cannot. Even if you can dismiss the above list of faults as irrelevant, the book conveys an inaccurate message. The message is libraries need hundreds of L/MTAs because of a library manpower shortage. Ms. Adamovich does discuss this problem in two paragraphs in her preface/introduction; unfortunately introduction/prefaces are seldom read carefully. Part of the problem is the preface was written in August 1974; the book published in 1975 and there are only ten articles taken from 1972, 1973 and 1974. If one takes into account the lag time in journal publishing it is easy to account for Ms. Adamovich’s comment “it is interesting to note that after 1972 or so interest in technicians.. . as expressed in periodical articles, falls off sharply” (p. xiii). Given a 12 month lag, 1971 would be the point in time when it became clear there was no manpower shortage. The articles chosen for inclusion are good pieces on the subject and are worth reading whether in this volume or in their original source. Ms. Adamovich knows the field; she has good ideas and understands the problems surrounding L/MTA’s and librarianship. I hope she can find the time, in the near future, to provide the field with a book giving her synthesis and thoughts about this critical issue. She has obviously reviewed the literature critically; she has taught in L/MTA programs; she has employed L/MTAs and she can write, if the preface is any indication; all these factors place her in a special position to produce a very important book on the role of L/MTAs. This book is overpriced for material that is reasonably available. No teacher should require students to buy material that any good teaching library collection can readily supply. UCLA Graduate School of Library and Information Science
G. EDWARDEVANS
Weeding Library Collections. STANLEYJ. SLOTE.Libraries Unlimited (Research Studies in Library Science No. 14). Littleton, Colorado, 1975, 177pp.. glossary, bibliog. index 087287-105-3. Originally the Research Studies series was intended to make available research studies of some but limited interest to the library/information science profession. So far most of the titles in the series have had a much wider appeal than ever expected. Certainly Slote’s book falls into this category. Weeding a collection, or as information scientists are inclined to say-file purging, is a perennial problem. Lazy librarians like lazy gardeners find this problem grows rather than remaining constant during periods of neglect. Because of the need to deal with the problem and the fact that this is the only current book in English on the subject, there has been a lot of interest in the title.