Work Book of Serials Procedure by Serials DivisionReview by: Donald ConeyThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Apr., 1933), pp. 201-202Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4301971 .

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REVIEWS 20I

Coolidge's dutobiography; Graves' Goodbye to all that; Herrick's Thinking machine; Wassermann's Maurizius case; Menninger's Human mind; Proust's The captive and Sweet cheat gone. Although such omissions would be improb- able under a more objective method of compilation, it is unfair to place too much emphasis upon them. The list includes so much that is useful that librarians may well be grateful for it.

LEON CARNOVSKY GRADUATE LIBRARY SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Work book of serials procedure. Compiled by the SERIALS DIVISION. Los Angeles, California: Los Angeles Public Library (Order De- partment), I932. PP. 43. $2.00. This "work book" of the Serials Division of the Los Angeles Public Library

is one of those infrequent and very useful additions to technical library litera- ture-a detailed description of a specific routine. Its publication for general distribution makes available in an orderly fashion information which could otherwise be got only fragmentarily by correspondence; in this respect it stands with C. P. Baber's Manualfor order department routine. With Pearl Holland Clark's The Problem presented by periodicals in college and university libraries, it adds another item to the literature of the technique for handling those valuable, but often vexing, publications-serials.

Serials force themselves into the library worker's attention through the difficulties they present to the order department and the cataloguer by their physical form, their irregular publication, their cost, and their illusiveness. Their condition cries for special treatment; and sooner or later, in well-organ- ized libraries, they get it. The Los Angeles Public Library found that three de- partments were handling serials as an incidental part of their principal work; for the sake of efficiency and economy the division of the order department whose routine is described in this manual was developed.

The function of this division is threefold: to acquire serials of all kinds, from the common news stand periodical to such annual publications as The Best short stories; to record the receipt of these publications; and to keep account of departmental and fund expenditures for them. In addition this division per- forms this function for the pamphlets and other ephemera that go into the vertical reference files of the library. The routine was developed for a large public library system, in this case comprising forty-nine branches as well as numerous departments in the central building.

This review is no place to attempt a criticism of this serial procedure, even if such criticism were possible without complete familiarity with the Los An- geles Library system. The value of the routine lies not in itself but in its pub- lication. It will be suggestive to public libraries in revising their procedures.

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202 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

It will be doubly valuable to library-school students as providing a means of inspecting this library's methods without the inconvenience of a personal visit. Publications of this sort make possible something approaching the "case book" method of study in library schools.

The book is issued in a loose-leaf binder, has an index, and is furnished with numerous examples of the forms used in the shape of actual cards.

DONALD CONEY NEWBERRY LIBRARY

A Guide to the bestfiction, English and American, including translations from foreign languages. New and enlarged edition. By ERNEST A. BAKER and JAMES PACKMAN. New York: Macmillan Co., 1932.

Pp. viii+634. $9.00.

It would be manifestly absurd to attempt to criticize this work as a list of books, or to attempt to appraise the selection of titles included. This is true for at least two reasons. In the first place, such a critical estimate would pre- suppose on the part of the reviewer a knowledge of fiction equal to or greater than that of the compilers. But more important than this, if such a critical estimate were to be made, there would be necessary, first of all, a knowledge of the criteria employed by the compilers for the selection of titles to be in- cluded. No such criteria are stated, except in the most general terms. And very general they must have been, indeed, to include in the same list of "best fiction" novels by John Galsworthy and Maurice De Kobra; to include Floyd Dell, and not F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Edgar Wallace and not Sidney Horler, or even S. S. Van Dine.

But librarians, perhaps, do not need such an appraisal of the list. It is, after all, an old friend, with whom they are well acquainted, and whose use- fulness they know. But even from old friends, new things may be learned. An examination of this list will tell us much, for example, about the history of fiction in English.

The list contains approximately io,ooO titles. An examination of the dates of publication of these titles is informative. The table below gives, in the form of percentages, the numbers of titles included which were first published at different periods.

TABLE I

Percentage Date of Percentage Date of of Titles Publication of Titles Publication

IO .Since I925 6o . , Since I 898 20 .Since I9I8 70 ............... Since 1893 30 ................... Since I9I2 o8 ................... Since i886 40 .Since 1907 90...... Since I868 So .Since i9o2

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