ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Letter

BI for educators

To the Editor:

The piece by the Bibliographic Instruction for Educators Committee of the EBSS section of ACRL (C&RL News‚ April 1988, pp. 217-23) is seriously flawed, especially in the “Reference tools” section. Despite the disclaimer that “Inclusion in this list by no means indicates endorsement of the quality of information provided by the source” (to which one might well respond, “Why not?”), the first two books listed have drawn highly critical reviews since 1968. These are the Gourman Reports on graduate and undergraduate programs (3rd and 5th editions, respectively).

Librarians in charge of selecting reference books might be excused for having missed the reviews in Personnel and Guidance Journal (May 1968); Journal of the Association of College Admissions Counselors (June 1968), reprinted in the Middle States Association Report (October 1968); the letter in the Journal of Education for Librarianship (Summer 1970); the full-page story in the Chronicle of Higher Education (May 8,1978, as well as a letter, July 3, 1978, and another long story, February 15, 1984); and the 17-page definitive article in Change magazine (November/December 1984). But it is less easy to excuse overlooking the 9-page article in RQ (Spring 1986).

If more need be said, a look at the new edition of Sheehy will disclose that the editors of that ALA publication declined to include the Gourman Reports because of serious questions about the validity of the compilations. To hand out the Gourman Reports in a public library to unsuspecting high school seniors is bad enough; to think of giving them to academic administrators, as the Committee recommends, is mind-numbing.

Perhaps one reason the Committee missed the recent critiques of Gourman’s books is explained by the fact that the “Bibliography” section of its report contains no title dated later than 1984.

The continuing uncritical use of the Gourman Reports calls into question standard library acquisition procedures. When a title is ordered without the backing of a faculty member or librarian, or a reputable review, does it then just land on the shelves without further examination? Do any libraries judge such books by more than their covers? Once a title is established on a library’s shelves, are new editions ordered like a drug addict hungering for a new fix?—William R. Eshelman, The Press at the Camperdown Elm, Wooster, Ohio.