Collection Building: Volume 7 Issue 3

Collaborative Collection Development: Progress, Problems, and Potential

David H. Stam

Library planning and collection building in the research libraries of the United States have long had to deal with two contradictory forces, autonomy and interdependence. The…

Watching Movies: A Guide to Video Review Sources

Don Julien, Beverly Owen

The widespread commercial videocassette market has opened to the world and to libraries a grab bag of viewing choices. Library response to the feast has varied throughout the…

Artificial Intelligence: A Review of Current Information Sources

Emerson Hilker

We have long been obsessed with the dream of creating intelligent machines. This vision can be traced back to Greek civilization, and the notion that mortals somehow can create…

On Discovery and Recovery

Helen Barolini

A year or so ago I discovered Writer's Choice: a Library of Rediscoveries, by Bill and Linda Katz which is, in fact, a book of recovery. As a librarian, I am acquainted with the…

Class and Selection

America's economic‐educational class system dominates book selection. This is evident to anyone who has worked at acquisitions and selection in a library. Over the years it has…

In Search of People's Culture

John F. Crawford

I am a specialist, I suppose, in People's Culture. It has taken me ten years to realize that is what I “do.” I publish books, and distribute other books, and study still more…

The Buckram Syndrome: Alive and Well, Alas

Nearly two decades ago, an entire issue of The Public Library Reporter was devoted to the results of a survey of public libraries' attitudes toward the purchase and use of…

Pleasingly Plump, Part 1: Nonfiction

How often today do you hear a woman described as “pleasingly plump”? Never, because this is the “Fitness Generation.” In the past, a woman could be heavy (or zoftig), but today…