In Close Association: : Research, Humanities and the Library

Citation

Hurych, J. (1999), "In Close Association: : Research, Humanities and the Library", Collection Building, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 4-7. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.1999.18.3.4.1

This short work is a condensed translation of a German publication, Buch, Bibliotek und Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung, by Bernhard Fabian. John J. Boll, the translator, claims that he omitted about half of the original and adapted the rest so he could address only what is important to American libraries and bibliographers. Fabian′s book is a commentary on the interdependence of humanities research and the research library. The library is viewed as a central institution for humanistic research, analogous to a highly developed research laboratory. The author argues that ‘‘the humanities have a right not only to exist in modern society but to bear a vital function which becomes more pressing with every advance in the natural sciences and technology′′ (p. 3). In other words the humanities are important more than ever in order to balance society′s ‘‘over‐emphasis′′ on technological developments.

The author also offers a view of the library′s role in the Information Age from a humanistic perspective. He believes that there is no chance that libraries based on what he calls ‘‘paper memory′′ will disappear. Fabian believes, with Crawford and Gorman, that ‘‘libraries exist to give meaning to the continuing human attempt to transcend space and time in the advancement of knowledge and the preservation of culture′′ (Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness and Reality, p. 3). He further believes that even in the future the book will be indispensable for scholarly research, especially in the humanities, because the book is not only a research source but also a medium of scholarly communication.

The translated work is divided into several chapters: ‘‘The Library: Essential Institution for Research in the Humanities′′, ‘‘Germany: An Example of Divided Bibliographic Responsibility′′, ‘‘Since No Library Can Own Every Original Record′′, ‘‘Meeting the Assault on National Literary Forces′′, ‘‘Book and Journal as Media for the Humanities′′.

The author speaks about the problems with electronic publications in the humanities and believes, with W.L. Saunders, that ‘‘in the humanities, the book is much more than a slab of information and the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts, the means of evoking imaginative, creative responses′′ (Journal of Librarianship, Vol. 1, p. 209). Fabian deals in some detail with the issues of collection development, cooperative purchasing, inter‐library loan, microform and digital collections. Special attention is devoted to the problems of manuscript records and bibliographic apparatus. A chapter on bibliographic control in Germany is included as a model not to be followed, according to the translator. Germany does not have an equivalent of one national library, and responsibility for bibliographic control is divided among several libraries, which makes a record of library holdings problematic.

Fabian strongly believes that, although libraries are changing due to computers, databases and networks, they will continue to exist in the foreseeable future. Although it is somewhat difficult to distinguish the voice of the German author from the voice of his American translator, the work is an extremely valuable contribution to the literature of librarianship. In Close Association should be a must reading for all students of library and information science, as well as for all academic librarians. It also provides interesting and eye‐opening reading for any scholar and student involved in humanities research.