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The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

The massive growth in the number of book titles has made publishers think about how to attract a customer’s attention to particular books. This is the reason why the book cover plays an important role as a tool of communication with the reader. The research question of this exploratory study is whether the preference given by readers to book cover colors is different across genders and age groups when they choose the book in an online bookstore by its cover. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The experiment in a bookstore and a library was done. Each respondent was asked to choose one book from our sample of 18 books and a mobile eye tracking laboratory was set up in order to find out the respondents’ basic gazing data. After conducting an experiment with bookstore and library visitors, the results showed that younger women tend to select a book by its cover (when the time for selection is not limited) statistically significantly faster than men of the same age group. The difference disappears with age.

The data of the experiment suggested that women from the age group 18-35 prefer books with cool color covers and the preference disappears with age; accordingly, men in the age group 56+ prefer books with warm color covers. The preference was not seen in younger age groups. The analysis of data on the number of choices for each cover and the time spent looking at each of them revealed a significant positive correlation between the women’s preferences in selecting covers and the time women spend looking at them; however, there was no such correlation in the case of men’s data.

The study has shown that the reader’s book choice is at least partly influenced by the cover color. The preference given to cool and warm colors and the speed of decision making show certain differences across genders and age groups. The result contributes to knowing how to create book covers more adopted to reader’s needs.

By adopting a cross-country analysis, this study aims to investigate how consumers' perception of book covers affects their online book purchases in terms of feelings of delight and perceived value of the book.

The authors tested the hypotheses using a structural equation model using two countries' datasets obtained from 191 Japanese and 207 French consumers.

The perceived attractiveness of a picture/photo on a book cover can positively influence feelings of delight. Such emotion enhances a book's perceived value, resulting in active online book purchases. Furthermore, when the perceived value of a book is evident, the French are more strongly motivated to purchase books compared to Japanese consumers.

By simultaneously examining emotion and perceived value as an organism, the authors advance the knowledge of the relationship between book covers and online book purchases. In addition, the authors offer evidence that cross-cultural differences (between the French and Japanese) can stimulate different responses to each affective and cognitive internal state, although similar environmental stimuli are provided.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

This survey covers civil, electrical and electronics, energy, environment, general, materials, mechanical, and traffic and transportation engineering. Areas such as biomedical and chemical engineering will be dealt with in future issues. Readers may find that the classifications included in this survey are not mutually exclusive but do occasionally overlap with one another. For instance, the section on environmental engineering includes a review of a book on the environmental impact of nuclear power plants, which might as easily have been part of the section on energy technology. Before we go into a discussion of data bases and indexes, I would like to note in this introductory section some recent bibliographic aids published during the period surveyed. Most engineering libraries will find them very valuable in their reference and acquisition functions. Since normal review sources will cover these books, I am merely listing them below: Malinowski, Harold Robert, Richard A. Gray and Dorothy A. Gray. Science and Engineering Literature. 2d ed., Littleton, Colorado, Libraries Unlimited, 1976. 368p. LC 76–17794 ISBN 0–87287–098–7. $13.30; Mildren, K. W., ed. Use of Engineering Literature. Woburn, Mass., Butterworths, 1976. 621p. ISBN 0–408–70714–3. $37.95. Mount, Ellis. Guide to Basic Information Sources in Engineering. New York, Wiley, Halsted Press, 1976. 196p. LC 75–43261 ISBN 0–47070–15013–0. $11.95 and Guide to European Sources of Technical Information. 4th ed., edited by Ann Pernet. Guernsey, Eng., F. Hodgson, 1976. 415p. ISBN 0–85280–161–0. $52.00.

Rare book collections are special, not only in terms of their physical appearance but also because of their historical significance and the information they contain. The purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the physical condition of rare book collections and to determine the main causes of damage to rare books collection that belongs to a museum library in Indonesia.

This research involved conducting a survey of the physical condition of the collection of rare books owned by a museum library in Indonesia. Supporting data was also obtained through interviews with one of the staff who served as the museum collection conservator. This study used random sampling to take samples from the collection, which consisted of 950 rare books, with total sample of 91.

The results obtained state that the condition of the existing rare book collection is classified as severely damaged. One of the causes of damage that can be addressed immediately is the cleaning regime: the collection and library space should be cleaned thoroughly and regularly so that dust and dirt in and around the rare book collection can be reduced.

This research was limited to physical identification, which can be done easily because it does not require various kinds of laboratory tests. It was a case study examining a single collection in a single museum library. The pool of books from which the samples were taken was therefore relatively homogenous. Therefore, it is hoped that further research can identify other factors and types of damage in more detail so that all damage to rare book collections can be identified and mitigated.

Research discussing the condition of rare book collections, especially for special libraries in museums in Indonesia, is still very limited. Detailed surveys of the physical condition of collections, especially rare book collections in museums, have rarely been discussed by previous research. The work will contribute to assessing the physical condition of rare book collections.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the reference works useful for finding written information on the North American Indian (that is, Indians presently and in the past living in what is now the United States and Canada).

Book sorting system is one of specific application in smart library scenarios, and it now has been widely used in most libraries based on RFID (radio-frequency identification devices) technology. Book identification processing is one of the core parts of a book sorting system, and the efficiency and accuracy of book identification are extremely critical to all libraries. In this paper, the authors propose a new image recognition method to identify books in libraries based on barcode decoding together with deep learning optical character recognition (OCR) and describe its application in library book identification processing.

The identification process relies on recognition of the images or videos of the book cover moving on a conveyor belt. Barcode is printed on or attached to the surface of each book. Deep learning OCR program is applied to improve the accuracy of recognition, especially when the barcode is blurred or faded. The approach the authors proposed is robust with high accuracy and good performance, even though input pictures are not in high resolution and the book covers are not always vertical.

The proposed method with deep learning OCR achieves best accuracy in different vertical, skewed and blurred image conditions.

Methods that the authors proposed need to cooperate and practice in different book sorting machine.

The authors collected more than 500 books from a library. These photos display the cover of more than 100 randomly picked books with backgrounds in different colors, each of which has about five different pictures captured from variety angles. The proposed method combines traditional barcode identification algorithm with the authors’ modification to locate and deskew the image. And deep learning OCR is involved to enhance the accuracy when the barcode is blurred or partly faded. Book sorting system design based on this method will also be introduced.

Experiment demonstrates that the accuracy of the proposed method is high in real-time test and achieves good accuracy even when the barcode is blurred. Deep learning is very effective in analyzing image content, and a corresponding series of methods have been formed in video content understanding, which can be a greater advantage and play a role in the application scene of intelligent library.

HAS the librarian responsibility for what is in the books he provides for the use of readers; if so, docs he, indeed can he, recognize it or do anything useful about it? We do not mean, as the most important thing, his fear, reasonable or otherwise, of books which have too much sexuality. It is a major problem upon which no authoritative statement for our guidance has ever been made except perhaps the police inhibitions and the Roman Catholic indexes in the subject just mentioned. That we can dispose of in the favourite saying of Stanley Jast “The Bovril of today is the Mellin's Food of tomorrow”, and refer to the general shift of public opinion towards toleration, or a more easy regard for sex in literature. To deny sex is to deny life. The problem is one that does not affect any but public adult libraries, where the reader need not read any book which offends his code but is not privileged to interfere with the choice of others who alone can be responsible for their own reading. Thus the argument goes, but public men are concerned for the unlettered reader who chooses a book in innocence. These can cause much trouble. One of the annual reports before us puts another difficult angle of the question: the readers who invariably demand these books at the public expense and question the librarian's assumption that he can refuse to purchase them. The schoolgirl is also a great concern to many: she is likely to know as much, if she is damaged by any book, as does her gratuitous protector. It would have been unthinkable twenty years ago for a national newspaper to publish the substance of a recent teacher's assertion that after an address on the facts of life to a form of senior girls, one of the girls told her it was interesting but had come too late: all the girls in her form had experienced sex and “would be thought odd if they had not.” This seems an extreme case but it has a definite warning that the trouble does not originate in the library.