Standards for Art Libraries and Fine Arts Slide CollectionsReview by: Rosemary LopianoThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul., 1984), pp. 321-322Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4307768 .

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REVIEWS 321

appears that there is little consistency or planning to many museum collections. These straightforward chapters help explain how collections are built and grow, how art is purchased, the deaccessioning process, and how and why museums change collection scope. The third chapter on museums in general deals with the organization of art museums, which can be a mystery even to old hands.

Dr. Gealt, Curator of the Indiana University Art Museum, understands her chosen subject and writes about it well. Each area of collecting is considered in a concise but thorough manner. The format is clear, the typography is clean and readable, and the index is comprehensive and easily used. While readers may not feel a strong command of art history after finishing this book, they will be conversant enough with the major periods and trends to be able to apply that knowledge when visiting museums and to heighten each experience.

The only criticisms that I have of this guide are small. First, if this guide is truly to function as a handbook to be carried around museums, the format should be smaller with a slightly lighter binding. Second, there are only 16 plates (9 in color) which illustrate the text. It would be useful to have had more illustrations scattered throughout the text to aid the reader in understanding more clearly the art about which the author writes.

There have been many guides to museums and their collections published over the years, but this is the first guide targeted for the casual museum visitor to aid in looking at and understanding that art. It is a useful perspective for both the layperson and the expert. As such, it is a welcome addition to the literature on art and museums.

Susan Glover Godlewski, Art Institute of Chicago

Standards for Art Libraries and Fine Arts Slide Collections. Occasional Papers, no. 2. Tucson, Ariz.: Art Libraries Society of North America, 1983. Pp. 46. $10.00. ISSN 0730-7160.

This work covers the areas of staffing and collection development in the art library and visual resources collection. It was developed over the past eight years by the Art Library Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) Standards Committee and the Joint ARLIS/NA-CAA (College Art Association) Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Standards for Visual Resources Collections.

The work is organized into 3 main sections that vary in style, format, and degree of astuteness. Section 1 covers standards for staffing art libraries. Sepa- rate standards are provided for academic, museum, and public libraries, and for each of these types there are separate standards for small, medium, and large libraries. Section 2, which provides standards for staffing fine arts slide collec- tions, is more comprehensive, despite some superfluous information. Its appen- dix, "Professional Training for the Fine Arts Slide Curator," is a balanced treatment of a complex and controversial issue. The third section, "Collection Development Standards for Art Libraries," begins with a general discussion of collection development and 3 rather weak appendices: "Collecting Levels," "Ba- sic Art Bibliographies," and "Materials Collected by Art Libraries." The collec- tion development standards themselves are delineated in the same way as those in section 1-according to type of library and, within types, according to size.

All 3 sections are written in clear, competent, though somewhat lifeless, prose. The visual presentation is somewhat dull and occasionally obstructs the content.

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322 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

Typography and blank space certainly could be used more effectively. It is all too evident that the 3 sections were developed separately. More attention should have been paid to the unity of the whole document.

Despite its shortcomings and oversights, this document will be an invaluable tool for evaluating and improving fine arts collections. Throughout, the stan- dards provide an ideal framework within which informed judgment can be applied to individual circumstances. These standards should thus be an impor- tant addition to all libraries that are concerned with the fine arts and with the library profession as a whole.

Rosemary Lopiano, Art Institute of Chicago Libraiy

From Graven Images: Pattens of Modern Materialism. By CHANDRA MUKERJI. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983. Pp. xv+329. $30.00. ISBN 0-231- 05266-2.

The conventional wisdom is that our consumer society was caused by the mass production of goods made possible by the industrial revolution. Mukerji argues against this and against Max Weber's view that the driving force behind the industrial revolution was religious-the Protestant Ethic. The main argument of this book is that materialism became the organizing social force in Europe and England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, replacing religion and the nobility, and that this materialism gave artisans the motivation to become entre- preneurs of industry, seeing profits in the production of more and more varied things.

Mukerji's materialism has three elements-mass consumerism, technical inno- vation, and scientific economics based on rational calculation. To prove her point she presents three case studies, all related to printing, although printing in a very broad sense. Her first case shows how prints-pictorial prints in books and as separate sheets-pervaded all levels of society, creating the concept of a mass market. More important, she sees the printing press as the first producer of objects, each one the same-mass production. Other objects also came to be produced in this way during this time period, for example, pins, pots, and ribbons. The printing press became a model of a production system which dumped quantities of objects on the market, consciously made available to different levels of society by varying the quality and cost of the product. Other new objects appeared during these early modern centuries as travelers returned from newly discovered parts of the world. Explorers brought back, not new ideologies, but new objects. The focus of attention was placed on material things, so that book and clock metaphors could be applied to nature; nature, as an object, came to be studied as book content was studied; and the universe and the human body could be seen as mechanical devices. This bias of attention to material things led to the development of material measurements rather than spiritual or social commentaries and, thus, to rational calculation and empiricism as the dominant mode of thought.

The second case is an analysis of printed maps as capital goods, as tools used in exploration. Knowledge of new trade routes, once kept as trade secrets by navigators, became more available as books of maps and descriptions of voyages were published.

The third study is of the calico cloth industry in England, which brought

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