Book Rmiews 389

a few additions from the Hennepin County Library. Relatively few would be useful in Subject catalog-

ing of the software. The longest list, for example, is of names of types of computers and is designed for use in the 753 field to indicate the hardware requirements.

Other appendices give a one-page list of sources for new subject headings, notes relating to the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classification schemes, and three examples of complete cata-

log records. This book can be recommended to those interested in cataloging microcomputer software using

the Library of Congress Subject Headings in either the original form or a modified form.

School of Library and Information Science The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada

TIMOTHY C. CRAVES

The Impact of Online Catalogs. J. R. MATTHEWS (Ed.). Neal-Schuman, New York (1986). viii It l-t6 pp., 529.95 (pb), ISBN O-918212-84-7.

This small book contains six papers presented at the American Library Association conference in 1983. A seventh paper, an evaluation of the New York University Bobst Library catalogs (online and card), has been added. All of the original papers make reference to, and can be considered an exten- sion of, the 1982 study of online catalogs sponsored by the Council on Library Resources (CLR). C. Lee Jones, CLR project officer, outlined the purpose of the meeting: to begin to assess what the CLR study data meant and to determine what the implications are for the library user, for the library staff, and for designers of future catalogs.

The benefits a reader may expect to gain from reading this book will be heavily dependent on the reader’s purpose and background. Those who are in the process of planning an electronic cata-

log may find useful suggestions in the form of insightful understanding gained by each study par- ticipant; the editor has also included a few of the question-and-answer exchanges that followed the six presentations, and these may be of added value.

Among the suggestions common to many of the papers are the following: (1) provide as many terminals and dial access ports as is possible; (2) improve, and increase the number of, the subject approaches provided; (3) make the data base comprehensive by including ail holdings; and (4) make

the system as easy to use as possible but anticipate that there will be some resistance to the system and that heavy (read, costly) staff involvement in helping and teaching users will continue. Since the original CLR-sponsored studies were basically descriptive in nature, each suggestion will require care- ful scrutiny.

An example of the problem one might encounter is to consider the question of “How many ter- minals?” In his paper “Online Catalogs and Systems Designers,” Gary Lawrence covers three gen- eral topics: the telecommunications system, the user interface, and the data base. One of the recommendations he makes is to design systems to accommodate more than the minimum number of terminals because the minimum will not satisfy users for long. We don’t know, however, what the minimum is. Furthermore, we have no idea of what happens to the level of demand as the number of terminals (and dial access ports) is increased. A review of the study data failed to reveal any analysis that relates frequency of “demand for more” with the actual number of terminals in the system. That is, we do not know if users always ask for more regardless of the number libraries provided or if demands are associated with systems that have an inadequate number of terminals.

Another problem with the base data was highlighted in a response by Lawrence following his presentation. The question was, “Would you elaborate on the findings on one of your transparen- cies? Twenty-eight percent said it was difficult to enter commands when they wanted to.” The answer was that the original question was actually a request for a response (to agree or disagree) with the statement “It is difficult to enter commands when I want to during the search process.” Lawrence acknowledged that “it is not at all clear that we know in enormous and technical detail what they meant when they agreed with that statement.”

Matthews’ paper, “The Online Catalog and Technical Services,” deals with five topics: biblio- graphic records, authority control, index creation, catalog maintenance, and organizational issues. Only the first refers directly to study data and contains the statement that “users are suggesting that the library proceed with retrospective conversion with all due haste (Table 1)” (p. 15). Table 1 indi- cates that 26% of the sample, the third highest, made that suggestion. The figures, however, are mis- leading. The question allows up to four responses, but the base used to calculate the percentage is the sample size minus “missing cases.” Although that may be an accurate representation, it is also

subject to suspicion. As many as 32,000 choices could be expected (4 times 8,094 respondents), but

390 Book Reviews

only 6,117 total responses are tabulated for the question. It is as plausible to state that most users

don? care as it is to conclude that the user wants everything. It would have been more informative to know how many individuals actually responded to the question. Was it a majority or just a small percentage?

The other major impact of the CLR studies has been the discovery that users rely too much on

the subject approach. The evidence for this statement is also open to different interpretations. Users were given a questionnaire and asked what information (author, title, topic, call number) they had when they used the catalog for a search. They were also asked how they searched. For each ques- tion, respondents were allowed multiple choices: that is, a person could check they had a partial author and a partial title and the call number, or any combination of full/partial and author/title/call number/term. The information also could have been for one item or for a group of items. Interest- ingly, if one organizes the categories of the responses into major groups, then what users possess (pre- vious knowledge) is strangely equivalent to what they did (type of search). The percentage of those who had author information when they approached the catalog (54.6 percent) was not very differ- ent from the number who indicated they searched by author (53.0 percent). Similarly, the percen- tages for titles (50.2 percent with information and 49.7 title searches) are not significantly different. Thus, there were more individuals who may have known an author and/or a title and searched the catalog accordingly than individuals conducting “topical” searches - usmg topical words or specific subject headings (roughly 73 percent). Again, comparisons are difficult because each respondent could

indicate as many categories as were applicable. The information gained from over 8,000 users is vir- tually useless for the library manager wanting to translate these data into a product. Designers and planners wishing to obtain a better insight into the searcher’s approach will find the Karen Markey paper, “Users and the Online Catalog: Subject Access Problems” (pp. 35-693, a comprehensive expo- sition of the problems.

The perspectives of two practitioners working in large research libraries are offered by Rose- mary Anderson of the Library of Congress (“The Online Catalog and the Library Manager”) and Lois Ann Colaianni of the National Library of Medicine (“Evaluating Online Catalogs: The Need for Data”). Doug Ferguson covers the implications of the online catalog to reference services.

The final paper in this collection is a report of an evaluation of the New York University Bobst Library catalogs (online and card) conducted in the 1983-84 academic year and the summer of 1984. The value of the paper is severely limited by the presentation, a condition that could have been

alleviated by better editorial efforts. There is a great deal of redundancy regarding the setting and method of investigation, while some of the findings are treated sparsely or in an unclear manner. Some statements do nothing to increase our understanding of user behavior or to aid in judging how well the catalog serves the user. Consider, for example, the following:

Lihen subjects [i.e., respondents] were asked about the search they had lust completed, most reported they had conducted a search for a subject or specific book and that they were apt to have used an author’s name or subject heading (p. 105)

The initial reaction is, “So what? What other choices are there?” Reading further (p. 109) one dis- covers that there uere also searches for “books by a specific author,” bibliographic searches, and searches “for other unidentified information.” Even then it is difficult to perceive the impact of these

findings. The typescript appendices of NYU data also required concerted effort in order to under- stand them. The reader should not have to work so hard; the probability of misunderstanding should not be so great.

All in all, the original six presentations are well written and clearly define many of the prob- lems facing designers and users of the online catalog. In order to exercise some judgment, however, the reader will have to supplement the content of this volume with other sources. Fortunately, use- ful references appear at the end of each of the papers in this collection, and the reader will soon dis- cover that an indispensable companion volume will be the Neal-Schuman publication Using Online Curalogs: A Nationwide Survey (1983). There is an index, but it is flawed by inconsistencies and omis- sions. Readers interested in “subject access” will have to look under “Augmented subject access” and “Subject access, difficulties with.”

The caution that some of the evidence is ambiguous and that recommendations must be scru- tinized may leave the reader with a negative impression, and that is not the overail intention. These papers highlight many of the major issues the profession faces; they clearly emphasize that the recent efforts to design better catalogs are a continuation, rather than a culmination, of a longtime pro- cess. For the reviewer, the study results also reinforced the belief that it is futile to always start from “scratch” by ignoring the results of previous research. Conducting literature searches is not the same as identifying variables, attempting to discern their relationships, and formulating testable hypoth-

Book Retilews 391

eses. For many, this procedure is viewed as “academic,” or “theoretical,” and impractical. In rebuttal one must raise the question, “How practical are our present methods?”

JXVES KIUKELAS

Academic Librarians and Cataloging Networks: Visibility, Quality Control, and Professional Sta- tus. R. I-&‘TER. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT (1986). viii f 153 pp., $29.95, ISBN O-3 13-24821-4.

Hafter’s book consists of seven chapters: I: “Cataloging and the Network Environment”; II: “Pro- fessional and Organizational Control in the Workpface”; III: “Deprofessionaiization”; IV: “Social Control”; V: “Peer Groups”; VI: “Quality Control Standards”; and VII: “Summary and Conclusions.” It purports to be Hafter’s response to a need for “research examining comparative changes in actual library and network practice and how the new realities of library performance, standards, and eval- uation practice impacted prevailing theories and beliefs about the work of library and information professionals and their management of technical change” (p. 4). It is intended to provide data about the impact of new technologies on the organizations that develop them, that is, networks on a tra- ditional profession, librarians in general and catalogers in particular.

Her research is based oh 68 interviews with catalogers, administrators, and network personnel at six libraries. Two appendices (A: “Quality Control Questionnaire for Cataiogers”; B: “Quality Con- trol Questionnaire for Administrators”) indicate the types of questions asked to solicit emotions, per- sonal and peer group values, etc., which appear to have become f-lafter’s chapters XII through VII, in particular, Chapter VI. However, Appendix C, “Computer Fields and Subfields,” which lisrs thFe

terminologies with definitions, is a useless listing. The first two chapters provide a useful background discourse on the environment in which

catalogers work and on the professional concerns of catalogers, In Chapter I, Hafter claims that the function of a library catalog has been debated over a century: a finding-list approach and a b~bl~ograpbic~too1 approach+ She states rhar “all librarians accept the idea that catalogs must pro- vide multiple ways of finding any specific item,” but they ‘<vary greatly in their commitment to com- plete bibliographic cataloging and often create hybrid catalogs that combine elements of the finding tool and the bibliographic catalog” (p. 11). She notes the context of the compromise between the prevailing cataloging codes and the local library’s historical practices. Reflecting shifting and dynamic intellectual concepts and relationships, cataloging rules “are revised to reflect research and theory about how information is best organized, indexed, and displayed” (p. 1 I). Technology has not only altered cataIoging rules bnt has also influenced library decisions for local cataloging considerations. Hafter further notes that these changes over time and these diverse interpretations of the rules become exacerbated in a network data base.

Hafrer describes how the high visibility of the online record is used as the basis far quality control by all networks-OCLC, RUN, and WLN. This visibility, along with methods of reporting errors and of controlling quality in the data base, have compelled catalogers to adhere to network-required cataloging standards and work rules.

In Chapter II, Hafter discusses professionalism through the concepts propounded by the most relevant authors and “selectively focuses on those characteristics of professionals mosf likely to be affected by visibility and/or networks” (p. 38). Wilensky’s two distinct and simple criteria for profes- sionalism are cited: (1) systematic knowledge or doctrine acquired only through long prescribed train- ing and (2) adherence to a set of professional norms. According to Hafter, librarians are not true professionals since the abstractness and rigor usually associated with legal or medica education are absent in library school curricula, as is monopoly over a knowledge base for organizing, Iocating, and distributing information.

Chapters I and II, which make up half of the book, would be good background reading for any- one who would like to gain a perspective an cataloging in a network environment and on professionalism.

The second half of Hafter’s book contains her research findings. Her research objectives are intriguing, innovative, and useful, because after more than a decade of increasing maturation, the consequences and effects of consolidation and centralization of library work in an automated envi- ronment and in the context of network relationship of libraries should be studied. There is an abun- dance of written works that address the effectiveness and productivity of library work as the consequence of consolidation of automation in a network environment. But works that address professionalism, the future role of professionals involved, and staff morale are scarce. These con-