Contemporary Crafts Market Place, 1977-1978 Edition American Crafts CouncilReview by: Joan M. BenedettiARLIS/NA Newsletter, Vol. 5, No. 6 (OCTOBER 1977), p. 162Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27945907 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Robin Kaplan, Editor

EDITOR'S NOTE: Please note the altered format of the Book Review Section, which results from a delay in the arri val of fall titles at ARLIS/NA Headquarters.

American Crafts Council .Contemporary Crafts Market Place, 1977-1978 Edition. New York, R.R. Bowker, 1977. 341p.

LC 75-518 ISBN 0-8352-0920-2 $15.50

This second edition of an invaluable contribution from the ACC and Bowker is a larger, more efficiently designed work than the previous edition. Its format accomodates a greatly expanded and edited compilation of galleries and shops, or

ganizations, courses (both degree and workshop programs), suppliers and products, shipping information, and regularly scheduled shows and events. For the librarian building a crafts collection the very large AV section and periodical and reference book section is an excellent aid. Both of these sections are by media broken down into many special cate

gories. The subject headings alone will be appreciated as useful cataloging aids. A random count comparing the 75-76 (reviewed here in

Spring, 1975) and the 77/78 editions reveals that the cur rent volume lists almost twice as many entries in most ca

tegories: from 69 to 101 California shops and from 8 to 14 in West Virginia; from 13 to 23 national organizations; from 2 to 13 Alabama events; from 36 to 101 periodicals. Book titles are up from approximately 2800 to 3800. Three aspects of the current crafts scene are reflected

here; many shops and galleries listed two years ago have

disappeared and have been replaced by new ones; greater awareness of the value of professional associations such as the ACC and special interest groups like the Hand weavers' Guild, and a blurring of territorial lines between the fine artist and the artist-craftsperson. Given the continuing expansion in popularity and diver

sity in contemporary crafts, this publication is a must for all

public libraries, any school or museum libraries with any crafts interest. Unless you have no budget at all for the crafts

area, you should buy the new edition although you may already own the first.

?Joan M. Benedetti

Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles

Art Library Manual: A guide to resources and practice. Ed. by Philip Pacey. London and New York, Bowker, in assoc. with ARLIS (UK), 1977. LC 77-702-90 ISBN 0-85935-054-1 $22.50

The work of pioneers is always difficult to evaluate. One owes them such a debt for having ventured into uncharted territories that to take exception seems to mitigate unnec

essarily one's gratitude.

162

The very real landmark that the publication of this book represents, after some ten years of an ever-increasing world

wide sensibility that art librarianship is an autonomous

specialty, with its own particular problems and rewards, can hardly be overestimated. Although library literature of the past twenty years has engaged in the discussion of various aspects of art library collections, no systematic attempt to outline problems and suggest standard pro cedures has been published until now. This volume of contributed essays on some twenty-four topics covers a range of thematic categories (e.g.: bibliographies, the art book, exhibition catalogues, periodicals and serials, primary sources, various non-print materials, ephemera, artists' books, loan collections of original works of art, etc.) and anticipates most of the kinds of materials which an art library collection might include.

Some of the essays are thoughtful and complete; some are cursory at best. In particular, the chapter on slides and filmstrips only begins to address the problems of this kind of material and offers some curious speculations on

procedure (especially, the consequences of not binding slides which circulate (that is, which are handled by non-professionals

- including art historians)

- do not seem to be completely understood.) The argument that the time and expense of binding are offset by the limi ted life of the slide simply is not substantiated by practice. However limited the life of a slide, it is still a matter of several years; the time/cost factor amortized over this

period is negligible, whereas one good fingerprint or melted slide means an instant cost of 100% to replace it, plus the

housing slides (in plastic sheets) is a method unknown to me, although I am sure it would work well in a personal collection. Metal frames or drawers seem to have become standard here. The idea that these methods do not allow for expansion and should be considered only for "static, reference collections" is bewildering; obviously one allows for anticipated growth of the collection in organizing a se

quence of slides just as one does with shelving for books.

And surely vertical files become full just as do cabinets

and drawers? Very odd. I am sure that other speculations in this chapter will disturb many slide curator/librarians as well.

The chapter on artists' books is helpful, although the

blithe statement that artists' books present few cataloguing

problems makes me wonder if we have been talking about the same thing. The need for careful descriptive cataloguing and the total lack of suitable standardized permutations of

subject headings (e.g.: Artists' books; artists' publications; artists as authors; bookbinding, artistic; bookbinding, unu

sual; privately printed books (art); art-periodicals-privately printed; publishers and publishing (art); publishers and pub

lishing -history-20th century; artists' periodicals; book

rarities; books as art; books as objects; writing in art;

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