http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1423 Allerton Park Institute Proceedings (no.7, 1960); Edited by Frances B. Jenkins http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1496 Summary Lancour, Harold Three score and five hours ago we met together for the first time, more or less strangers to each other. Since that time we have talked, gossiped, mildly flirted, consumed 2, 000 cups of coffee, walked through the lovely gardens, and before dinner have enjoyed a drink together. Out of this has come group identification that is at once transitory and durable. Memory of specific things will be fleeting but the enrichment that is the residue of the experience will be long lasting. We have been engaged in an educational enterprise. Education has a dynamic and organic quality which means that what happens is more or less unpredictable. We can make some guesses and have some hopes as to what will transpire here but we can never be sure as to precisely what will happen. So in a way summaries are devised to look back and see what the dimension and the character of the educational experience has been. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1495 The Status of Science Fiction as Literature Janes, Adrian In this discussion I want to say something about where science fiction has been and where it is now and then comment on where I think it stands in relation to what we ordinarily call "good" literature. But as in all discussions ot science fiction, it is necessary to start with some definition so you will know what I am talking about. Definitions vary widely, and any one if taken literally will lead to some contradiction. Some go so far as to include Arrowsmith, ghost stories, or the Book of Revelation. I don't include any of these. My definition is pretty standard: fiction that has in it some reasonably logical extrapolation of the science of the time, usually coupled with intent. For example, I would exclude Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, even though it has some scientific trapping, because Stevenson intended to present an allegory, and I would also exclude Gulliver's Travels. But I would include Bishop Godwin's The Man in the Moone; a Discourse of a Voyage Thither, which was published in 1638, because it is an account of space travel even though highly impractical. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1494 The Components of the Science Collection Strieby, Irene M. Previous papers have discussed the various aspects of science literature for general reading so presumably all previous steps already have been taken into consideration when the basic ingredients of the collection- -or components, as the term appears in the title of this paper are analyzed. This phrase, somewhat anticlimatic, lands the author somewhere on the circumference of a circle --perhaps that vicious one containing the chicken and the egg. Or to put it another way, some may feel that we had the "cart before the horse "--that, for example, one does not select until he knows what to select for whom, why, when, how, and where. Much time could be wasted on the question of priorities but, since this is the last discussion in the second series, we cannot turn back and start all over again. Let us proceed, therefore, to think about the composition of the collection, built or re-built, in the light of what the reading public wants, where to get it and how, as well as of other types of materials the general reader might use to advantage once he becomes aware of their existence. In this paper some suggestions may, of necessity, emphasize those made by previous speakers; in fact, they may be repetitive in spots. On the other hand there may be some difference of opinion. By this time one gathers that the general reader is a person of ordinary intelligence who has not had recent training nor, up to now, specific knowledge of the subject in which he has indicated an interest. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1493 Problems of Selection in Science Budington, William S. Identifying the problems of selection in science has something in common with trying to decide how to vote for the next president. You can go just by the picture on your television screen, or you can review his existence back to the time when his father first smiled at his mother. Book selection can be considered a simple, daisy-picking game of love-you, loveyou- not, or you can bring into the picture the entire world of publishing, selling and readingand the lives of humankind, our readers. In this discussion, a selection will be made from the general as well as the particular, from aspects of library administration as well as the peculiarities of science literature. Problems there are many, of solutions there are some. Many of the problems attributed to the selection of science materials are common to selecting in any field. Indeed, one may say that there is no special problem with the science books; the real problem is with the librarian who is trying to do the selection. When dealing with fiction or family life or politics or history, the librarian wades right in (sometimes with his useful aids, of course), winnowing the harvest. Science, however, carries the stigma of a mysterious and impenetrable region, which only the initiated dare enter. The barrier is primarily one of terminology; the words are esoteric and meaningless, by themselves or together in a sentence. In the social sciences, we hear no complaints of trouble, even where words, perhaps meaningful when alone, are strung together in incomprehensible titles. There, we cope; with science, we give up. The basic fear, then, is that because we do not understand science, we cannot even begin to select materials on it. None of us is an expert in all the other fields of knowledge, yet we do select in them. There is no overwhelming reason to get fluttery or hysterical about science. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1492 The Aids of Selection Bonn, George S. In my own thinking and, indeed, teaching, about book and periodical selection for any puipose whatsover it is convenient to consider the problem as a series of a half-dozen separate but closely related decisions or judgments that have to be made, each one more specific and more personal than the one before it. Any aids, therefore, in selecting books and periodicals (or other materials) for a particular library should be aids to help the librarian make these decisions. The value of such help is, of course, dependent to a large extent on how intelligently, or how professionally, if you will, the librarian exploits the aids available to him. Intelligent exploitation is in turn dependent to a large extent on how well the librarian understands what the aids can and can not do to help him, and on how well the aids themselves fulfill their own avowed purposes. Aids all by themselves simply can not make decisions. This paper will attempt to bring together and to describe in some detail representative and outstanding currently available aids which should be helpful to librarians in making the necessary decisions involved in selecting science literature for general reading, rather broadly conceived. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1491 Publishing of Science Literature Shipman, Joseph C. The book in one form or another has always played an essential role in the development of the sciences, and only a slightly less significant part in the story of technology. Scientific knowledge and accomplishment are cumulative, and most creative scientists will agree with Newton, who said, "I stood upon the shoulders of those who went before me. " Greek science, and particularly Alexandrian science and mathematics, owed their survival to the manuscripts preserved and copied through more than 1,000 years in Byzantium and in Islam. The modern scientific rebirth which began in the sixteenth century, and reached its first peak in the seventeenth century, was transmitted by personal correspondence, by books, and finally by the journals --which were born in the seventeenth century, and which were eventually to become the most effective vehicle for scientific communication ever devised. The arts and crafts involved in technology owed more to oral tradition and to carefully guarded trade secrets, handed down from generation to generation, than did the sciences. However, once science and technology were wedded, and became increasingly interdependent, then the printed book and the journal became almost as important to technology. Almost, but not quite. There is still a realm of trade secrets, --a shadowy realm which is increasingly short-lived, because of the accelerated pace of new developments which tend to make such trade secrets obsolete in a short time. There are still restricted and classified materials made necessary, or thought to be necessary, in terms of national security. In the long run, publication of the results of research in both pure and applied science become absolutely essential for continued progress. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1490 Science Knowledge Through Audio -Visual Materials Dickman, Joseph E. It would be presumptious for me to tell librarians the advantages of the printed word in communication, but in case there are any audio-visual enthusiasts present, let me review some of the advantages of the printed word in communications. Even in this modern age of television, radio, telephone, and motion pictures, the printed word is still the backbone of our communication and education. This is not only so because the printed word as a mass media came first, but because of its economy and compactness. Examples of its economy are evident in the 10 cent newspaper, the 25 cent weekly news magazine, the $1.00 paperback classics, and even the Great Books of the Western World for a few hundred dollars, including the Syntopican. Examples of the compactness and transportability of the printed word are everywhere about us, from the yearly statistics of the postal service to the five foot shelf encompassing all knowledge in an encyclopedia. But, since the audience present consists largely of librarians who are in a centuries -old and established field, and I am in the new and struggling field of communication, I would like your indulgence in considering some of the advantages of this field of picture communication and then specifically relate it to the field of knowledge in the rapidly expanding field of science. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1489 Symposium: Reader Interest in Science - Adults Thackery, John T., Jr. A comprehensive discussion of what adult readers read, and why they read, in the area of the sciences would take much more time than the limits of this portion of the symposium afford. This consideration therefore proposes to indicate some conclusions based on observations and reading- -observations which it is hoped will be helpful, both as an aid in meeting current problems and as a stimulant to further discussion. Katherine Prescott concludes her study* of the interests of people who used the Norwood Branch of the Cleveland Public Library by indicating that the prime function of this particular branch was to "help people meet the problems of everyday living. " Reading for entertainment came second, and highly intellectual reading was a very poor third. This study was undertaken as an aid in shaping book selection policy, and as such it is useful to us in furnishing the above mentioned clue as to why people read. The characteristics of a library's service area determine both quantity and quality in what is read, and therefore the specific conclusions certainly do not apply to each and every library because the physical, economic, and social factors vary from community to community. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1488 Symposium: Reader Interest in Science - Young People Zim, Herbert In considering young people's interest in science, I intend to include people from the sixth grade level to senility. The matter of definition of children, young people, and adults is not too much of a problem because the whole concept of age level and grade placement of materials has had a severe shock during the past ten years. A few years ago you could pick up a book and find clearly stated on the jacket that this was for seven year olds, or this was for fourth grade children. Today you will find that the designators have disappeared and it is difficult to find out for whom a book is intended and why. When you examine the interests of adults you find that they have basic problems that occupy their attention, e.g., the matter of earning a living, of adult responsibility, concern for the future, and the like. When it comes to a curiosity and general interest in the world around, the knowing of things for their own sake, the subjects that interest adults are not the kinds of things that press upon them for economic or other reasons. The differences between adult interests and young people's interests are very small. The same kind of curiosity that makes an adult read something that Watson Davis 1 editors get in the newspaper is about the same level of curiosity that makes young people do the same thing. Once at the level where vocabulary is not difficult, roughly about the fourth, fifth, or sixth grade or thereabouts, the interest picture irons itself out pretty much between adults and younger people. Libraries --Special collections --Science http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1487 Symposium: Reader Interest in Science - Children Rosen, Sidney My interest in science was first stirred by reading the adventures of an extraordinary young man, who combined the ingenuity of an Edison with the moral integrity of a Plato and the get-up-and-go of a Horatio Alger hero. His name was Tom Swift, and I read my way through his series of adventures with marvelous rapidity. Such books, of course, were acquired (along with Frank Merriwell and Nick Carter) by a mysterious trading process; they did not sit on the shelves of my public library. After Tom Swift came The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle, and The Land That Time Forgot, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, both introducing me to the realms of historical geology. The piece -de -resistance of that glorious period of reading was Paul de Kruif's The Microbe Hunters. This work did the job of convincing me (and many of my contemporaries) that science was one of the most adventurous areas of man's knowledge. This notion of reader interest at a young age pointing the reader toward a career is not a new one. Many of the thinkers and doers in man's history were affected deeply by the reading they did when young, whether they read words printed on paper, inscribed on parchment, or heiroglyphics on papyrus and cuneiforms stabbed into wet clay. One of the first "easy" books on science, a forerunner of "do-it-yourself knowledge, " was Jane Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry, published in England in 1820. This book sold over half a million copies in America alone, and was responsible for many young men turning to chemistry as a career; one famous example was Josiah Cooke, the great nineteenth century Harvard professor of chemistry. Libraries --Special collections --Science