3. When the typical firm order is for a monograph about which nothing is known but the abbreviated cataloging record of an ABPR entry or a slip, both the academic relevance of publications and their quality are hard to assess. In training new bibliographers or talking to experienced ones, I frequently visit the topic of how one makes intelligent guesses in this area. The desire to get our arms around this topic in a semi-objective manner led me and John Stemmer to conduct the research reported in, "A Reputational Study of Academic Publishers," College & Research Libraries 57 (May 1996): 234-47.