The Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators by Mary Hutchings Reed; CopyrightPolicy Development: A Resource Book for Educators by Charles W. VlcekReview by: Meredith ButlerThe Library Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 1988), pp. 420-421Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4308317 .

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420 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

national weekly from Boston, the wrong micropublisher is identified. GCN itself, not University Microfilms International, sells the microfilm. Further, Malin- owsky uses an outdated subject heading for Asians, "Orientals" (p. 174). Despite the gay community's leadership in supporting people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), fewer than two dozen AIDS-related titles are listed, and inexplicably, publications like the left newsweekly Guardian and the library-oriented New Pages are included. The National Alliance is hardly a "gay and lesbian newspaper" (p. 88), but a product of "social therapy" proponent Fred Newman's New Alliance Party.

While Oryx Press is to be commended for supporting this long-overdue effort, one wonders why someone else more knowledgeable was not assigned the task. For more accurate and current listings of U.S. lesbian and gay periodicals, subscribe instead to the regional and national editions of Gayellow Pages (New York). Many more improvements are necessary before the flawed Oryx title can be recommended without reservation as a reference or selection tool.

Daniel C. Tsang, Social Sciences Librarian/Bibliographer, University of California, Irvine.

The Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators. By MARY HUTCHINGS REED.

Chicago: American Library Association, 1987. Pp. iv + 60. $7.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8389-0472-6.

Copyright Policy Development: A Resource Book for Educators. By CHARLES W. VLCEK.

Friday Harbor, Wash.: Copyright Information Services, 1987. Pp. viii + 164. $17.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-91413-08-5.

Mary Hutchings Reed serves as legal counsel for the American Library Associa- tion (ALA) and is a partner in a Chicago law firm. Her Copyright Primer grows out of previous work she has done for the ALA and the National Education Associa- tion (NEA). This sixty-page booklet offers brief explanations of aspects of the current copyright law that will interest librarians and educators and supports these explanations with short questions and answers about application of the law in library and educational settings. The series of questions and answers probably represent questions often asked by educators and librarians as they have sought guidance about interpreting troublesome or ambiguous areas of the copyright law over the past years. The format is familiar and echoes the format of earlier ALA copyright publications.

Reed states in her introduction that the questions and answers are meant to "provide guidance in applying the nuts and bolts of copyright" (p. 2). She does not purport to offer legal advice, nor does she assume liability for the opinions offered in the booklet. However, she does not always make clear what is a matter of interpretation and what is clearly stated in the law. Those more concerned with proprietary interests would disagree with some interpretations, particularly those applying the principles of fair use to classroom and library settings.

The scope of the booklet includes fair use, library and classroom copying, college and university photocopying and reserve room copying, music and sheet music, videotapes-home, classroom, and library use-video guidelines, off-air taping guidelines, computer software and software guidelines, liability and rem- edies for infringement, and, finally, how to obtain permission to photocopy. The style is accessible and straightforward. The author gives clear messages about

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REVIEWS 421

what is included in the scope of the booklet and what questions go beyond its scope.

The booklet is a useful introduction to complex issues of ongoing concern for librarians and educators. In particular, the discussions about copyright basics for videotapes and computer software are very helpful and can serve as a basis for further exploration of fair use and its applicability to these electronic tech- nologies.

Whereas Reed's booklet is purposely simple, Vlcek's book is simply trivial. The author is a director of instructional media at Central Washington University and has been involved in copyright consulting for many years.

Following a promising title, the author provides nineteen pages of introduc- tory text written in a most pedestrian style. The material is negative in tone-the opening argument justifies the need for attention to copyright policies by em- phasizing the threat of lawsuits (p. 4)-and offers generalities supported by no evidence. Pages 20-163 are a series of appendixes providing examples of copy- right policies from various educational institutions. The author makes no at- tempt to evaluate the policies or resolve differences of analyses or interpretation in them.

Librarians and educators need guidance and assistance in developing copy- right policies for their libraries, schools, colleges, and universities. Providing examples of other institutional policies without the context people need to evaluate and assess their effectiveness is simply not helpful. It is sad to see that such a trivial effort has found its way into print.

Meredith Butler, Assistant Vice President, State University of New York at Albany

English and American Literature: Sources and Strategies for Collection Development. Edited by WILLIAM MCPHERON. ACRL Publications in Librarianship, no. 45. Chicago: American Library Association, 1987. Pp. xii +217. $29.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8389-0476-9.

Academic librarians did not become deeply involved in collection development until the 1960s, that bygone era of generous funding that saw the introduction of subject specialists. Prior to that decade, the bulk of academic library collection development was under the faculty's jurisdiction. Inevitably, a corpus of library science literature pertinent to collection development emerged more slowly than for other aspects of the discipline. Although a reasonable amount has now been published on various facets of collection development, practical "how-to" guides are still relatively scarce in the published literature. This situation has been remedied to a considerable extent by a recent American Library Association series on collection development. The first two volumes, Selection of Library Materials in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences, edited by Patricia A. McClung (Chicago: ALA, 1985), and Selection of Libra?y Materials in Applied and Interdisciplinary Fields, edited by Beth J. Shapiro and John Whaley (Chicago: ALA, 1987), have been well received by the library community.

The volume under review-third in the series-lives up to the high standards of its predecessors. Composed of ten separate essays by individual authors, almost all aspects of collection development pertinent to English and American literature are covered, including acquisitions techniques, serials, retrospective collection development, reference materials, and nonprint media. The ten essays

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