PRINCIPAL CONTENTS OF QUARTERLY REVIEWS AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
| Published date | 01 December 1945 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1945.tb01937.x |
| Date | 01 December 1945 |
REVIEWS.
of
the index card on which the book is listed
in
the library card catalogue. The
research library of the future will be very largely a vast card-index. To read a
“book”
in
it will involve taking the card from the index drawer and placing
it in a
“
viewer.” Mass production will provide good viewers at a cheap rate.
Every library will have batteries
of
them. Every scholar will have his
own.
The
multiplication of the card-books or micro-cards will be easy.
Mr.
Rider proposes
a
penny in the slot machine to reproduce microcards from the library indexes.
Put the card and five cents in the machine and it will photograph, develop,
fix,
dry and deliver a perfect copy in a few seconds.
A
library of five hundred
“volumes” will be a small addition
to
one’s week-end suitcase. The poor
scholar will be able to find room for a respectable library of many thousand
volumes in
a
small suburban house. The Palestinian sage
who
wearily observed
two thousand years ago that there was
no
end
to
the making
of
books deserves
yet another tribute to the profundity
of
his
insight.
Not merely is space saved by micro-cards but money also-lots of
it.
It
is now
an
expensive matter for a library to accept a gift
of
books.
An
80-page
pamphlet may be delivered free, yet
it
costs an American library
$1.50
(7s.
ad.)
to
bind,
catalogue and preserve.
To
turn
it
into a micro-card would cost
15
cents,
to file the card
3
cents, or a total
of
20
cents
(1s.).
An
expensive book published
at
$5
costs the library
$6.64.
On the back
of
two
micro-cards it costs
36
cents.
What are the
snags?
The chief is
of
course
the possibility that viewers will
become as cheap as Mr. Rider hopes. At present, although he
does
not say
so,
there
seems
little hope of very great reductions
in
their cost, which is very high.
Microfilm viewers are more manageable. Then again the cards assume
the
preexistent manuscript, typescript or printed
book.
As
long as they remain
copyright they must not be reproduced on micro-cards without payment.
Mr. Rider considers this objection of
small
account
in
comparison with the
vast amount of non-copyright material ready to hand
and
urgently needing
to
be
made available. Government publications, departmental records, newspapers,
out-of-print non-copyright books, and, manuscripts
will,
he holds, keep the micro-
card makers busy for generations
to
come.
He
foresees
also a wide sphere
of
utility for the cards
in
administration, commerce and industry.
It is a fascinating prospect which he opens before us, and the research scholar
will have only one question to ask (since finance should be, as
Mr.
Rider correctly
observes,
of
secondary concern
in
the advancemept of knowledge). The question
is the title of Mr. Rider’s last chapter,
“
Microcards-When?
”
F.
R.
C.
-
PRINCIPAL CONTENTS
OF
QUARTERLY
REVIEWS
AND
OTHER
PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED
Public Administration Re- The United Nations: Reorganizing Walter
H.
C.
Laves
Review
Principal Contents.
Author.
view. (Vol. V,
No.
3,
Sum- the World’s Governmental Insti-
mer,
1945.)
tuuons.
Bureaucracy and the Problem of Reinhard Bendix.
Power.
Notes
on
the Governmental Execu- Donald
C.
Stone.
tive
:
His Role and
His
Methods.
The Role
of
Budget Planning and Merrill J. Collett.
Personnel
as
Staff Services.
Some Problems of Army Depot Ad- Schuyler Dean
ministration. Hoslett.
Journal
of
Public Administra- English in the Public Service
-
-
Prof.
I.
A. Gordon.
tion. (New Zealand Inst. Helping Jnior Staff to Find their Feet
L.
S.
Heamshaw.
of
Public Administration. The Government Railways Indus-
T.
P.
Dawn.
Vol. VII,
No.
2,
March,
1945.)
Administering the Policy
:
Economic M. J. Moriarty.
trial
Tribunal.
Stabilization.
Towards Functional Administration
J.
P.
Lewh.
163
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