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.