Education and Libraries: Selected Papers by Louis Round Wilson by Maurice F. Tauber; JerroldOrneReview by: Andrew H. HornThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 396-397Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4305827 .

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396 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

packed solidly with data, but curiously lacking the lively touch of Tauber that one might have expected. What we have here are all the facts: the precise dates, the lists of persons, the names of places, the sequence of events. But what is missing is some sense of the drama in the life of a man who took the lead in so many important activities and movements.

Were there no conflicts? Were there no set- backs? Were there no struggles and frustra- tions and triumphs? Of course there were, but they are reported in a style so undramatic that the impact of them is lost. Take, for example, the story of the acquisition of the Weeks' Col- lection for the University of North Carolina. Here was a collection of 10,000 important titles that would act not only as a foundation for the collection but also as a means for at- tracting other materials. Wilson recognized its significance for the library and the university -but the university had no funds for its pur- chase. What would Wilson do? How could it be managed? Here is Tauber's full account: "Wilson went into action. He prepared an ex- tensive memorandum on its desirability, which easily convinced President Graham that the university should acquire it" (p. 57). We then get the full names of all the trustees who ex- amined the collection.

Or take Wilson's third trip to Europe as an official delegate of the American Library As- sociation and rapporteur at the International Library Congress in Madrid. We are given a complete list of the delegates (ten lines), and then this: "Although some of the group went first class, Wilson and three of the others went tourist class. He enjoyed the calm, pleasant voyage" (p. 159). Yet we know, from quota- tions from Wilson himself, that everything he encountered in Europe was interesting, excit- ing, and instructive, from the administrative organization of libraries to the flowers in the parks. Indeed, whenever Wilson is quoted-or others (like Donald Coney) who knew him- a bit of spirit and life, of personality and indi- viduality, comes through. But when Tauber reports as biographer, all is reduced to the bland recital of data.

Among the surveys which Tauber reports is that of the University of South Carolina Li- brary, on which he and Wilson collaborated. Here, surely, would have been a superb oppor- tunity to report in detail on aspects of the en- terprise that would give us a sense of Wilson, the human being. What we get is: "In March,

they visited the State-supported libraries in Charleston, Rock Hill, and Clemson, to find out what, if any, plans might be devised to increase cooperation among those four librar- ies and thereby improve the services of each" (p. 225). And that's all; we do not learn what they found or what they recommended; we do not get the close-up of Wilson at work nor the intimate view of Wilson in his off-hours that no one but his co-surveyor could supply. Noth- ing is reported that could not equally well have been presented by someone who was not personally involved at all.

We must conclude that Tauber is deliber- ately suppressing any detail that would reflect the Tauber personality; that he is consciously effacing himself in order to make Wilson the constant center of our attention. More schol- arly readers than I may find this to be ad- mirably objective and will rejoice in the wealth of factual detail, the definitive bibliography, the excellent chronology of events in the Uni- versity of North Carolina Library, the topical arrangement that deals with each professional facet of Wilson's career as librarian, editor, author, library surveyor, and educational statesman. Certainly one should be glad that we do not have here the conjectures about what went on in the subject's mind, the re- created dialogues, the fictional embellishments, the vulgarisms that mar so many popular biographies. And certainly we must acknowl- edge that Tauber has met the assignment he set for himself: to describe Wilson, the Li- brarian and Administrator.

But Tauber is so admirably equipped to give us also Wilson, the Man, that I for one regret that-for whatever defensible scholarly reasons-he chose not to do it. What he has chosen to do, happily, is edit (with Jerrold Orne) a collection of Wilson's papers under the title Education and Libraries, thus permit- ting Wilson to speak for himself, and provid- ing a welcome supplement to the scrupulously impersonal biography.

LESTER ASHEIM

American Library Association

Education and Libraries: Selected Papers by Louis Round Wilson. Edited by MAURICE F. TAUBER and JERROLD ORNE. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press, Inc., Archon Books, 1966. Pp. xviii + 344. $6.00.

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REVIEWS 397

This selection of papers by Dr. Wilson is, informally at least, a companion volume to Maurice F. Tauber's fine biography of Louis Round Wilson which is also reviewed in this issue of the Library Quarterly. The two were published within a period of a few weeks, the selection of papers late in 1966 and the biog- raphy early in 1967. However, Education and Libraries is not merely an appendix to the biography. It has a very substantial inde- pendent value for several reasons.

One of these reasons is that anything Dean Wilson ever wrote for publication was care- fully prepared, was important at the time, and has remained a significant contribution no matter how long ago it first appeared. A larger work, including all of the Wilson papers and reports that have appeared in scattered periodicals or proceedings together with his unpublished papers, would be better than a selection; but a selection is certainly a more realistic venture, and better than no compila- tion at all-provided the selection is done carefully. That this selection was made with care is quite evident. Tauber and Orne have brought together a number of the best known or most frequently cited of LRW's papers. Also, they have chosen a few less familiar pieces, probably not known to most Wilson admirers, in order to present a balanced dis- play of interests that are the basis of the book's organization. This purpose-to show the breadth, depth, variety, and persistence of a great library statesman's contributions- and the unity of the book are further made evident in the warm Foreword by Robert M. Lester and in the Introduction, a nine-page biographical sketch of Louis Round Wilson by the two editors.

Another reason this book is a valuable ad- dition to our professional literature is the convenience it serves. Of the twenty-eight papers included in the compilation, one is published for the first time and six or eight are reprinted from publications that might be considered elusive-for example, the Bul- letin of Elon College, the Virginia Alumni Bulletin, and proceedings of various rather local conferences. Consider also the span of time involved when one searches for a pub- lished statement by Dr. Wilson. His first article (not on librarianship, it is true) ap- peared in 1899; the most recent this reviewer has noticed is the Introduction to the October, 1966, issue of Library Trends. Nearly seventy

years! The reprinted papers in this selection, Education and Libraries, were originally pub- lished between 1907 and 1953.

The papers are arranged chronologically within the following five topics: The Library in the Social Order, School Libraries, College and University Libraries, Education for Li- brarianship, and Publishing in the South. The sections on school libraries and publishing in the South are much shorter than the other three in number of articles and pages. One might expect, in a collection of this impor- tance and in a book of such quality, a complete bibliography of the published writings of Louis Round Wilson. The omission is not serious since one does appear (pp. 245-65) in Tauber's full-length biography of Wilson. There are two very good Indexes, subject and name. The book is well designed, well printed on good paper, and sturdily cased.

Educationz and Libraries is a tribute to its author, one secure in the hall of fame of the library profession; and it was published in the ninetieth anniversary of the American Library Association, which happens also to be the ninetieth anniversary of Wilson's birth. The editors and publishers deserve our thanks for the commemoration. But our greater debt is to Louis Round Wilson for having originally written these contributions of lasting impor- tance to our professional literature.

ANDREW H. HORN

University of California Los Angeles

Handbook of American Resources for African Studies. By PETER DUIGNAN. ("Hoover In- stitution Bibliographical Series," No. 29.) Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1967. Pp. xvi + 218. $6.00.

The author is a historian who, since 1959, has been curator of the Africa Collection at the Hoover Institution. He has realized a proposal first announced in 1964 to prepare a needed handbook on African library re- sources modeled on the Handbook of His- panic Source Materials and Research Organi- zations in the United States, compiled by Ronald Hilton (2d ed.; Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1956). The pur- pose of this volume is "to call attention to

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