BOOK REVIEWS

Bibliography, by Girja Kumar and Krishan Kumar. three pages several inaccuracies and mistakes have New Delhi, Vikas Publishing Hous~ 1976. vii, 257p. _ crept in. It has been said about citation indexes, Re. 17.50.ISBN 0-7069-0431-1 L Reviewed by B Guha ~ that ..." Under each citation are grouped all those contributions which have referred to the primary The raison d'etre for writing this book, as article"(p.ll7). This gives the impression that the authors put it is that the present study makes a only articles are cited. This wrong impression has, special attempt to cover bibliographies of Indian fortunately, been corrected by stating, in the origin. This will be very much appreciated by the same page, "Cited items can be books, articles, readers in India. letters, theses, editorials and other forms of published material". In the same page, it is sa~d The contents of the book have been presented that citation indexing" .•. is based on the relatIon in eighteen chapters. The first few chapters are on of every significant word in the title of an article, Branches of bibliography, Evaluation of bibliography, or book and links the same to other publications and Index to periodicals and abstracting periodicals. with similar terms occurring in their titles ..." The concluding chapters are on Bibliographical service~ After reading wr~t has gone before, this will'sound Mechanics of compiling and arranging bibliography, absurd. The statement, quoted above, is relating Maki~ of.a bibliQirapher, and New developments. to the permuterm subject index. But the authors In between there are eleven chapterS on various have mistakenly ascribed this to,citation indexing types of bibliographies, such as, National biblio- as a whole. Coming to the description of the Permuterm graphies, Trade bibliographies, Union catalogues, subject index in the next page (p.ng) one comes acro- Subject bibliographies, Indexing services, Abstract· ss an equally annoying sentence.- It reads, "It uses ing services, Universal bibliography. In each chapter the searching technique of following up references a number of references and lists of further reading cited in relevant papers". have been introduced. In the chapter on Abstracting Services, In the preliminary chapter, the present comparatively greater attention has been given on the reviewer was exPecting to find the name of Louise- Biological Abstracts and Chemical Abstracts. This Noelle Malcles as names like Besterman, Esdaile, is quite understandable. However, very little P2S Roy Stokes, George Schneider, Rangana'than, Fredson been said about the supporting indexes, which are Bowers and others have been cited and quoted. This important characteristics of these two services. The BA name is not there. However, at least once this indexes have at least been mentioned. The Generic celebrity has been.mentioned in the ch~Pter on.Univer- index has been introduced as Genetic index (p.l34)'and sal Bibliography (p.lSl), as the author of an.Im- it has not been mentioned that the subject index is portant bibliography but even th~re the name I~ called the B.A.S.I.C. index. In the case of CA, the introduced with awkward double mIstakes as LouIse- volume indexes - the Molecular formula index, the Noel Macles. Ring index, and the two subject indexes have not been mentioned at all. In the main portion of the text one may miss many important bibliographies of various kinds, but, The intension of the reviewer is not to present then it is surely not possible to include them all a long list of errors. The type of mistakes that have in a book of this nature and size. However, one been pointed above would be unexpected in a book asso- feels that the famous Arizona University bibliography ciated with the names of two senior professionals. on India ought to have been mentioned. Similarly, Even then, they are there. This may, perhaps, make some of the bibliographies on typically Indian one feel that authorship is really hazardous. subjects and compiled by Indian librarians, such as, Dr. J S Sharma, have all been neglected. It is On the whole, the book should be useful for doubtful, whether research-in-progress type of pub- all library science students. lications can be considered as bibliography. But the authors have mentioned two such publications (p.71) . The case for Bliss: Modern classification Here, they have missed the better examples of this practice and principles in the context of the Biblio- category, which have been b.·.1ughtout by Insdoc. graphic Classification, by Arthur Maltby and Lindy Gill. London, Clive Bi~ley, 1979. 142p. 5.50._ The present reviewer v-s specially interested ISBN: 0-85157-290-1. L Reviewed by T.N. Rajan ...I in the two chapters on Indexing Services and Abstract- ing Services. Wi thin a short span of thirtyfour pages one cannot expect to find even all the most important and widely used services. Within this severe limitations, the present reviewer was pleasantly surprised to find a three-page treatment of the . citation indexing, Science Citation Index and SoCIal Science Citation Index. Unfortunately, in these

128 Ann Lib Sci Doc BOOK REVIEWS signing the Bibliographic Clas~ification(BC) which suitable on the whole neither for the shelves, nor carne out in four VOOlD!leSbetween '1940-1953. Although classified catalogues nor machine retrieval. These Be was used only in a small nlmber of'"libraries for critisisms are not wholly fair because no classi- shelf organisation and in catalogues, it has remained fication system has or would ever perform all the largely a system for academic stUdies In classification three functions viz, shelf organisation, file or to explain and·demonstrate classificatory princi- organisation in catalogues and bibliographies and ples for pedagogic purposes. In recent years, how- machine retrieval, with equal efficiency. In fact, ever, through the continued efforts of the "inde- there is a strong body of opinion, insisting on fatigable" Jack Mills and a few others, it has been different tools to be used for these three functions, resurrected to fit into a new garb. The book under although there might be some overlappings. review presents an interesting, objective and useful account of this resurrection. In doing this, the BC's limited success was also due to other authors, besides giving a historical perspective of factors which are summed up by Maltby. '~d he BC, have examined the new developments of BC in the (Bliss) been more extrovert, his goals with more light of modern classification practice and princi- clad ty, marketed the system more vigorously, bui It ples. up an editorial team and funding, and corrrnitted himself to rather earlier publication, then he might The book is in two Sections. In the first have offered a scheme which was not only flexible, Section, Maltby, portrays the various features of scholarly, technically efficient and-in notational BC as conceived, designed and developed by Bliss with terms-economic, but also the most practical and comments and criticisms, followed by the subsequent effective of all the pre-1950 systems. As it is, developments to bring out a re\~sed edition of it represents an opportunity largely missed,. although BC, radically different from the original, except it still merits study for the light which it sheds the basic structure. on nearly all perennial issues of bibliographic cla- ssification in the widest sense". The second section includes a Guide to cla- ssifying by the revised edition of Be with illustra- The intrinsic merits of BC have always had an ted examples to aid classifiers, and a case study in appeal in Great Britain, although in the land of its reclassification of a library collection consisting o:igin there was hardly any supporter. The BC enthu- of books predominantly in the behavioural sciences, SIasts did not want that BC should be confined to the medical and non-medical subjects, both chapters by archives. This naturally led to the formation of a Lindy Gill. In the concluding chapter, Maltby rounds Bliss classification Association, which took over up with a survey of Be users and a few suggestions the responsibility of revising BC. The mantle of for the future development of BC2. leadership fell rightly on Jack Malls who had not only been a long-standing admirer of Bliss but also .In designing Be, Maltby opines that "no been an outstanding expert in classification. With individual in the history of bibliographical classi- his deep conviction and faith in faceted classifica- fication has equalled the time spent by Bliss in tion, ~fillshas converted BC into a faceted system ascertaining and weighing the needs of learning, without altering the original basic stTIlcture. The in the penetrating analysis of other systems and the revised system known as BC2 has the following main slow evolution of his own". "Bliss had systematically features among others: read one or more of the basic books in every field of science, but who felt that in view of the impossi- 1) Keeping the original order of the main bility of mastering all human knowledge ...the answer classes, which it is claimed to reflect, was perceiving the relationships berween things-and the more or less, the principle of inte- key to these relationships was classification". (Quoted grative levels, the facets of every by Maltby from Engene Garfield's 'A memorable day in class is fitted into a general citation May 1954 with Henry E.Bliss'. Wilson LibraEY Bulletin, order. This order is Thing (reflecting 1974, 288-92). With such a sound preparatlon, BliSS purpose or end product) Kind, Part, propounded a theory of classification based on a set Property, Process, Operation, Agent, of fundamental principles such as scientific and Place and Time. While this citation educational consensus, allocation of related sub- order is recommended to be followed in j ects, subordination shown in gradation by special i ty general, an alternative citation order and composite specification. The structure of. is permitted when needed, but has to be knowledge thus built was to be maintained by a system very carefully applied. of non-expressive (teles coping) mixed notation whose hallmark should be brevity. The principles of 2) Provision is made for classifying alternative location and alternative treatment which complex subjects to display phase re- provided a great flexibility to suit various needs lation which follows closely Ranganathan~ of users, were hailed as unique features of Be. But prescriptions. The position of the with all these very desirable features, BC does not primary and secondary phases in a class seem to have been a great success. mark, however, can be interchanged, keeping the needs in view. In a general appraisal, Maltby attributes the small success of BC to its being "too complex 3) A retroactive notation is employed for and scholarly for the relatively gross demands of the purpose of achieving the desired order on shelves, but ill-equipped to provide a results of synthesis, which allows the rational, economic and efficient method for the Principle of Increasing Concretness of world of doClD!lentationand sophisticated retrieval, facet order. No specific connecting including computerised retrieval in large i.nforma- symbols are required to display facet tion beaurex or net works". BC was neither an relationship when using retroactive enlD!lerativesystem nor a faceted one but a hybrid notation.

Vol. 26 Nos 1-4 (Mar - Dee) 1979 lZ9 BOOK REVIEWS

4) An A/Z index is prepared on the princi- cise, 18 are in psychology, followed by 7 in education, ples of Chain Procedure. 5 in social welfare and 2 in Religion. Here a wider variation in the choice of the subjects could have In all these, it is easily seen that Ranga- been more helpful. nathan's ideas are very much reflected. Mills has suggested a citation order for UOC in his "Guide On the whole, the book is a good addition to to UOC" and interestingly almost the same citation the literature on classification, more particularly order is prescribed for Be2 also. In summarising on BC and Bliss. In the Indian context, BCZ may have the new features of Be2, Mills lists the following a favourable reception in that many of Ranganathan's technical achievements of BC2: ideas and principles are applied in it, using a fairly simple notation. We should, however, await 1) "An overall order of major classes the publication of the full edition of BC2, for superior to any existing general scheme detailed examination and study. in the helpfulness to the searcher for information. The internationaZ author8 and writer8 Whd'8 2) Within these major classes, an order of who. 8th ed, Adrian oaeter, editor. Ccunb1'idge maximum helpfulness based on consistent (England): Intiernatrional. Bibliographic Centre, 1977. and predictable principles of citation xvii, 1167p. Unp1'iced. ISBN 0 900332 45 X (Reviewed and filing order. by B.K. sen), 3) A notation fully hospitable to current requirements of specificity and parti- The 1st edition of this who's who was published' cularly well suited to maintenance on in 1934, and just within a period of slightly more the scheme develop. than four decades, the 8th _~Lcion has come out. The 6th edition was also reprinted. This, I believe', can 4) A notation of exceptional brevity and be construed as an infallible index of the popularity simplicity in view of its accomplish- and usefulness of this tool. ments. The who's who includes some 14,000 biographies 5) A very thorough and consistent A/Z providing information on pen name (if there is any), index, supplementing extensive rules for the date and place of birth, profession, education, practical application, ~~ich should make publications, honours, present address, etc. in respect the scheme notably simple to use and of the individual included in it. The publication has apply. included biographies of authors and writers from all parts of the world wri ting in various languages. The 6) A maintenance service. international character of the tool is very much evident from its very first page, wherein biographies 7) A system published in parts, where the of I Finnish author, 2 Indian authors (i.e. Ramesh user can purchase the'whole scheme or Choudhary Aarigapudi & Khwaja Ahmad Abbas); 2 British merely those classes he needs". authors, 1 U.A.R. author, 1 Pakistani author, 3 U.S. authors and 1 French author have found place. Even To what extent Be2 will succeed, it is too through a quick glance one can locate many Indian early to say anything. The full edition of BC2 is authors (including authors writing only in regional still not out but expected to be published only in languages), the total number of which may run into the early or mid eighties. However a number of hundreds. Another astonishing fact is that quite a critical observations have already been made on BC2. number of Indian authors (e.g. Ramesh Choudhary Firstly is it a revised edition? Maltby wonders what Aarigapudi, P J Abraham, Chandra Prakash Agarwal, an uncompromisin~ Bliss would have thought of Surendra Kumar Agrawala, Vasudeva Sharan Agrawala, Be2. "After all, even Karl Marx at the end of his Meena Alexander, U R Anantha Mlrthy, Dhulipudi lifetime is reputed to have said 'I was never a Anjaneyulu, Krishna S Arjunwadkar, to name only a Marxist". Probably in the light of the developments few) who have not found a place in India Who's Who, in classification principles and practice particular- have been included in this. It goes WIthout sayIng ly in the last three decades, it is inescapable that that the publication will prove to be highly useful a new edition of BC will have to conform to the new to the Indian librarians and scholars. thinking, lest it may have no future. "The revised Be", Maltby asserts, ''when all classes are available ~~ile scanning through the book, one notices for judgement will be a remarkably coherent and with wonder the inclusion of biographies of many less up-to-date system". known or little known Indian authors on the one side, and omission of significantly large number of well- In the final chapter of the book Maltby offers known Indian authors like Dr. R.C. Majumdar, Dr. a few suggestions for the future developments of BC2. Niharranjan Ray, Kuldip Nayar, Pritish Nandy, Amrita These relate to feedback and support from users of Pritam, and many others on the other. Why this is Be2 active involvement of more persons for developing so, is not clear. Bimal Mitra, Premendra Mitra, the'major groups of subjects, for production, ad- Gajendra Kumar Mitra, all are noted Bengali littera- vocacy and advice at the national and international teurs and have been awarded Rabindra Memorial Prize, levels, and a systematic testing facility for BC2. the highest literary award given by the Govt. 9f West Bengal. Of the three authors, only Gajendra Kumar The chapter on Guide to classifying by BC2 Mitra finds a place in this tool, who by no means can is quite useful, for the delineation of the different be ranked above the other two. Jnanpith Award, the techniques for applying BC2, using illustrative highest award in India for literary contribution, was examples. Of the 32 items given for practical exer- instituted in 1965 & till 1977, 15 outstanding Indian

130 Ann Ll b Sci Doc BOOK REVIEWS authors (i.e. G. Sankara Kurup, Tara ShankerBannerj ee , who can afford it, a quantitative up&:ading o~ Dr. K.V. Puttappa, Urna Shanker Joshi, Stunitranandan existing library and information servIces? WIll the Pant, Raghupati Sahai Firaq, Dr. Vishwanatha Satya- on-line technology merely enable us to offe: ?Ur narayana, Bishnu Dey, Randhari .Singh Dinkar, Dr. clienteles more of the same, but to do tradItIonal _ Dattatreya Ramchandra Bendre, Gopinath l>bhanty, kinds of things faster and, hopefully, better? Is It Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, P.V. Akilandam, Mrs. simply, in this sense, a quantitative, evolutic;>nary Ashapurna Devi , and Dr. K. Shivarama Karanth) got phenomenon, or does it actually have the ~apacIty this award. Of the authors, only one (i.e. P.V. Akila- to bring about a true qualitative change m the ndam) has figured in this tool, whereas International character of information delivery in libraries?" who has included three of them (i.e. P.V. Akilandam, Surely, these are the fundamental questions, wfiich Bishnu Dey and Sumitranandan Pant). This itself is the librarians and the users of information will ask Bishnu'Dey and Stunitranandan Pant). This itself is in the context of application of on-line technology indicative of the fact that no criterion has been in the provision of library and information services. followed by the publisher for the selection of The volume under review provides answers to most of authors for inclusion in this tool. these fundamental questions and curiosities. Spelling mistakes have also been noticed Even the potentialities of on-line information here and there. In the entry - Mitra, Gajendra Kumar, systems can only be dimly sensed by most of us. Allen Prithibiir Itihas has been spelt as Prithibiiz Itihas ; Kent, in his key paper entitled 'the potential of Aami Kan Pete Roi has been rendered as Aami Kanpeteroi; on-line information systems' gives us a clear picture Panchajanya has been spelt as Panchjanya; Ananda Bazar and he asserts that this new technology does indeed Patrika has been printed as Ananda Baazahr, etc. offers a qualitative advantage in realizing the In the entry Sanyal, Probodh Kumar one finds the opportunity to achieve a new service level, to move mention of Bazar Patrika, which in all probability to a new and higher plane in facilitating human will be Ananda Bazar Patrika. l>bre attention needs interaction with knowledge records. The second part to be paid in the transliteration of non-English of the book considers the impact of on-line systems titles. from different angles - technological, social, and economic. Pronunciation of the name has not been given. The obituary of persons died in between the publica- The third part should be of considerable tion of the 7th and 8th edition has also not been interest to all information workers and especially to given. teachers in library science. What type of changes has to be brought about in the training programmes To make the who's who really useful, the of librarians and users are discussed by several publisher should see that at least the well-known authorities. It has been pointed out that, 'we authors of all the countries are included. need a new approach, not just because the data base files are different in structure and invisible to us, Apart from the biographies, the book provides but because use is so different; the strategy for a list of pseudonyms of included authors and also of searching a machine stored file is qualitatively literary agents of the world. and quantitatively different; it is also different in a purely physical, mechanical sense". The on-line revolution in libraries; FToaeedings On the whole, the publication gives a of the 1977 aonferenae in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ed. fascinating preview of the future library world and by Allen Kent and ThorrrzsJ. Galvin. NewYork, Min'ael should be of considerable interest to librarians Dekker, 1978. xviii, 303p. (Books in library and and users of information, library administrators information eeienoe, vol 23). $ 29.75. and planners, computer scientists and producers of ISBN 0-8247-6754-3. information products. L Reviewed by B GuhaJ Regional Union cataloque of Saientifia Serials: The present volume incorporates the papers Durqapur; Compoby P.K. Chaudhary and S.C. Roy. pur- and related discussions of the 1977 Pittsburgh gapur:Library and Documentat-ionSeation, Central Me- conference, where nearly seven hundred fifty li- ohanioal. Engineering Reeearoh. Institute, November 1978. brarians, information specialists, administrators 207p.[Reviewed by S.K. Sen~ and representatives of the information industry, from almost every state and many foreign countries, During the last two decades union catalogues assembled to consider "the on-line revolution in have come out in pretty good numbers in India. INSDOC libraries". Very significantly, the papers and and Social Science Documentation Centre were the two discussions have been grouped under three main parts- organisations mainly responsible for this activity. the potential of on-line information systems, impact INSDOC covered scientific periodical holdings and the of on-line systems, and training and retraining Social Science Documentation Centre covered social of librarians and users. The fourth and last part science periodical hOldings of the country. This is devoted to the closing summary. Union Catalogue by Chaudhary & Roy is yet another contribution to this field. Thomas j Galvin has stated in the Introduction, "A very basic question about on-line tecru;ology and This Catalogue lists 2500 titles of periodi- libraries is do we really. have a revolutIon - actual, cals in alphabetical order depicting the holdings of potential, o~ both - on our h~ds? If so! what is 11 libraries of Durgapur region of West Bengal. It the true dimension of the on-lIne revolutIon and the may be pointed out here that the Catalogue covers ul.ti: +e scope and range of its impact~ Is the some non-scientific periodicals also, like Capital, on- ; technology just a means to ach ieve , for those Commerce, Economic Journal, Economic Weekly, etc.,

V 01. 26 Nos 1-4 (Mar - De c] 1979 131 BOOK REVIEWS which are there in the hOldings of the libraries l1ow. The prospective student is reassured of an covered. The periodical holdings depicted in this easy passage through the lessons considering that Catalogue have also been reflected in the Regional Ukrainian bears a close and Int.imateresenblance to Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials: West Bengal Russian in script, gramnar and vocabulary. In fact, (ROC: WB). But there are some differences. The the author does not even use the word lesson in de- non-scientific periodicals, and scientific periodicals ference to his idea of encouraging a creative, in- having very lean holding covered by this have not formal approach to the study. been covered by the RUC : WB. I-tJreover,this Ca- talogue depicts every missing issue. The rationale for studying Ukrainian is simple enough. It is useful to acquire a knowledge of Uk- The collection of data en periodical holdings rainian, a major language of the Soviet Union, second of different libraries for compiling a faithful only to Russian, with periodicals and journals carry- union catalogue requires great patience, utmost ing an enormous amount of research material signifi- meticulousness and unsatiable desire for exhaustive- cant for science and technology. t.tJchof this ma- ness. This catalogue b~ars ample witness that the terial may not be readily available in other languages authors possess all these enviable qualities. It including Russian. Our scientists and translators may suffice to say that the present publication should find a study of this language easy and profi- lists some titles like Journal of Design & Development table given that they have a working knowledge of Forun, Heavy Engineering Corporation, Ranchi; Pro- Russian. ceedings of the All India Machine Tool Design and Research Conference; Metallica; etc. which are very For teaching us Ukrainian within a relatively difficult to find elsewhere. The authors have short span, Ashit Chakraborty employs the method of a practically left nothing. Whichever publications were "comparative-contrastive study of Ukrainian and within the scope of this Catalogue have been included Russian". He familiarizes us with the Ukrainian even if a single issue was found in a library. script by showing us that it is much the same as Russian with very little difference. This difference Directories can also be treated as serials. he drives home to us. He gives us Russian words And the same has been done here. An.{) Directory of along with their Ukrainian and English equivalents Indian Manufacturers, All India Educational Directory, when we see how easy it all is. He compares and con- Assochem Farm Input Directory, and many others have trasts Russian orthography with the Ukrainian. When been included in this. Annual or similar other a certain Ukrainian word is orthographically at vardan- reports emanating from various institutions & orga- ce with its Russian equivalent he even ventures to nisations, usually obtained free. do not always create a suitable word with an informal arbitrariness receive a fair treatment from the librarians and as and calls it, simply enough, hypothetical! Next he such are not properly reflected in the catalogues. introduces us to Ukrainian texts giving us their But this catalogue tells a different story with the literal translations in English. inclusion of 170 Reports (133- Indian), belonging to the holdings of only 11 libraries that too from a There is then considerable space devoted to a region like Durgapur. Just for illustration this discussion on the Ukrainian verb followed by one on figure can be compared with the figure of the Regional the prepositions. There is a discussion on the noun Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials: Hyderabad, and the adjective, the gender and the number. Case which lists only 76 reports pertaining to the holdings declensions are also dealt with. of as many as 51 libraries of the metroplis. The only one priodical, which should have All through we are given small texts, frag- legitimately found a place in this but is unfor- ments or isolated sentences in Ukrainian, the needed tunately missing, bears the title 'Durgapur Steel word meanings and of course the literal translations Tidings' . of the sentences and the texts. All through,the attempt at comparison and contrast between Russian and Ukrainian is more or less sustained, now feebly, Ukrainum - Pt 1, by Ashit Chakraborty. Delhi, now with a spurt of nervous energy. Chhaya Chakraborty, 1980. 120'£. s«. 25.00 L Reirieiaed by C P S Nambiar J Well, if we work through the book without being put off by the disorganized presentation of the course material, we can hopefully emerge with a know- Mr Ashit Chakraborty appears to us in many ledge of Ukrainian sufficient for indulging our incarnations: of a scholar with broad humanity, of mischievous translating faculty. a linguist, of a logician, also of a teacher. A few more can perhaps be added to the list. What is more Yes, this book helps us to gather some measure relevant, however, is the fact that he has a well- of knowledge of the language at least to start off stocked mind and most of his works yield conceptual with. This is the tribute we can and ought to pay insights and sparkles. We are therefore inclined to Mr Ashit Chakraborty for his labour of love albeit welcome a new work from Chakraborty. The work before closing our critical eye for a moment or two. His us is a manual or a primer written by him in his incarnation as a pedagogue is not a failure. pedagogic incarnation. It guns for all those with a sufficierit knOWledge of Russian ,with a down-to-earth Having said this, we are reluctant and hesi- promise that they can pick up enough of Ukrainian tate to pick holes in Mr Chakraborty's opus. These to be able to read and grasp texts in Ukrainian and holes are, however, fearsome and may tend to engulf translate them into English in a matter of two or us, the readers, if we do not stare hard enough at three months. them with the armour of defensive understanding. The method and the instructions for achieving Mr Chakraborty does not seem to care mich for this purpose are given and are simple enough to fo- clarity and precision, the sine qua non of all

132. Ann Lib Sci Doc BOOK REVIEWS writing in general and of a manual or primer for half, though somewhat relevant content-wise, becomes language learning in particular. There are in his worse than irrelevant through illiterate use of work avoidable repetitions or overlapping statements. English. One exanp le would suffice to drive home the Witness, for example, what the author says on the substance of this point: conJugation of Ukrainian and Russian verbs (pages 22 23). It is an irrelevant, though brief, antici- "In the Soviet age the newest development in pati~n of the discussion of the verb occurring much Ukrainian literary language that got large-scale lat~r. To take another example, on page 28 we are impetus is the formation of a scientific and publicis- given an Introduction to Ukrainian Texts. Then taking tic style. A rich harvest of scientific, tecJmical us through a discussion of several grammatical points socio-political lexic and phraseology has now deve Lp- we are suddenly left, without rhyme or reason, to ed which was unknown earlier; Translations of the ',ce another Introduction to Ukrainian Texts, on works of Marx and Engels, Lenin, political doctment s page 37. The divide between the one introduction and of the conmini.s t parties, advanced works of Russ an ;,"Ie other besides being arbitrary, is an untenable and foreign scientists in different disciplines" :l"tempt at fooling the unwary reader. The discussion (page 11). 'n adjectives and case declensions are scattered ( or spattered ?) here and there. There is The quote is an exact reproduction of th cri- precious little mention of the adverb or the verbal ginal passage preserving all the ong~nal marks or adverb or the participles, which perhaps is another punctuation. The point that bears emphasis her is act of convenience on the part of the author. that in a slender work of this nature in 120 pa6es or so, the passages like the one quoted above are not Though the comparison and contrast is admitted- merely irrelevant but unkind verbal assaults, unin- ly between Ukrainian and Russian, the author delights tended of course, on the reader who cannot possibly in making references to other languages without making stomach them. his point lucidly. The effort is apparently to im- press us quite in the manner of a social climber who Curiously enough, the book has no table of drops big names in conversation. contents. Perhaps it does not admit of any index of contents in its present shape. Words are used often loosely. The author seems to have a yen for inflicting monstrous word combina- From beginning to end this primer is strewn tions on the reader: for example, orthographico- with passages and sentences translated by the author morphological; phonetico-morphological and others. from Ukrainian into English. These are called, per- Many words are wrongly spelt and punctuation is given haps for the sake of convenience, literal translations. the go-by. Great God, what an almighty jumble we Now any experienced translator would tell us that ' have here! there are only two kinds of translation: good and literal, the literal being nearly always bad. Re- Mr Chakraborty believes firmly in angling for produced below are a few of these literal transla- testimonials from public or well-known figures. Re- tions attempted by Mr Chakraborty:* meroer his earlier work Read Lepcha? This one ca- rries a conmendatory foreword by M.L. Sondhi. For, 1. Horse without tail they do not buy. any perceptive modern reader is apt to look upon the giving and taking of such testimonials, in itself an 2. I go happily to honourable right work. outmoded practice, with unconcealed suspicions. Testi- monials are cheap gimmicks and a writer like Ashit 3. Became green the cherry orchard. Chakraborty should hasten to part company with gimn- ickry in writing. There is one more testimonial in 4. Will come hour also for us. the book, occurring in the preface, in the shape of a letter by 1. Gai published in the "prestigious S. Who highly behaves, that often lowly sits. Literaturea Ukraina". The reader should in no event miss it for it has moments of hilarious entertainment 6. Time silently flows year after year. to offer. 7. On eleventh year (they) gave him to A sense of relevance is both desirable and school (page 54). essential for all purposive writing and writers. But the book under review bristles with irrelevancies. 8. Like a thunderous lightening (sic) thus There is a preface by the author, just referred to spread the day after, from lip to lip, above, with a long quote from a supposedly prestigious from glen to glen, from pasture to pasture Ukrainian journal. The whole quote is a screaming the word till unheard (page 83). translational h01TOr inflicted on the reader for an uncertain harvest of kudos. Then there are two 9. Under the moustache of Andrei there floats lengthy essays: Expanding the Working Knowledge of a grin ( page 88). Slavonic Languages and Ukra~e Throughout the Ages. The first, being a study of the comnmrty of Slavonic 10'. Long they over the graveyard beside the Languages and of the bonds that knit them together, village stood. would have been more useful but for the loose writing and grammatical illiteracies that characterize it. 11. From Leninistic Science gets stronger The second is a curious jtDJi>leproviding an account brain and hand (page 96). of the culture and history of the Ukrainian nation with anple doses of so many other things Ukrainian like geography, economics, science and science publi- * The reader is cautioned against reading them cations, iron ore production and child mortality. casually, because while reading them be is likely Half of it is wholly irrelevant and the remaining to make whoopee and break his ribs,

Vol. Z6 Nos 1-4 (Mar'_ Dee) 1979 133 BOOKREVIEWS

12. Re-read again all the previous things Semi-automated processing system was used for data ( page 118). collection.

(This last sentence is not a literal trans 1a- The whole study is split into seven chapters • .tion, but a master stroke from the author's own Chapter I relates the objectives, rationale, locus' pen occurring at the fag-end of the opus by way of and dimensions of the study. Data collection, fin- . Inst.ruct icn under the head ''Revision''). dings and their application regarding circulations and use of books and journals are covered in chap- Even a concerted attempt by Dr. Samuel Johnson, ters II and III. Chapter IV deals with economi~ of the Fowler brothers and G.H. Vallins would fail to materials use along with a library decision model fully understand these quotes, especially the one for book purchase on the basis of data gathered. In serially numbered 8. If the author contends all this chapter V, "A cost-benefit model" of library operations is literal translation and, therefore, good literature, is drawn. The rest of the chapters (VI and VII) deal then what this hlDlDle reviewer has written here is with resource-sharing and implications of the present srperfor by far to The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot. study.

Use of iibrary materials: 'The Univer8ity of There are plenty of figures (30) and tables Pittsburg study,by Allen Kent et al., New York, Marcel (130) which help the reader to understand the details DeKker. 1979. 272p. $ 25.00_ISBN 0-8247-6807-8. very easily. An appendix (in 3 parts) is in the end L Reviewed by Renu Arora ..I followed by a 4-page index to the tenns, etc. used in the study. This use study of an academic library centres on "examination of the use and cost of library ma- To sum up, the book being an extensive terials". It was carried out by eight persons- Allen research study is useful for people interested in Kent being the principal investigator. A librarian fields of research studies, use studies, management buys and stocks books not only for present but for techniques, library statistics and library coopera- future needs too. The objective of the present study, tion. It- can be a valuable addition to academic thus, was "to develop measures for determining the libraries and library school libraries. The author extent to which library materials (books/monographs has stated in the beginning that the original and journals) are used, and the full cost of such use". objectives were not achieved and this must be consi- dered as a "first edition".

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