College and Research Libraries


leled by the ease with which a flawed 
copy may be undetectably made," either 
accidentally or maliciously. How can I be 
sure that what I am reading is what I 
intended to read or what I read before? 
Graham explains clearly the potential of 
three electronic techniques to protect text: 
encryption, hashing, and time-stamping. 
He argues forcefully that librarians are 
uniquely qualified as a professional group 
to wrestle with the combined issues of 
authentication, security, and preserva-
tion. And to those who would shrink 
from this task because of the apparent 
complexity of technologies he rejoins 
that minds that are capable of using Hin-
man collators or dealing with corporate 
authorship are equal to the task! 

Due to the illness of another speaker, 
Graham also delivered his paper several 
days later at ALA in the Association for 
Library Collections and Technical Serv-
ices President's Program. Therefore it 
has been published in essentially the 
same form in the proceedings of that 
program, After the Electronic Revolution, 
Will You Be the First to Go? (1993.) 

Some of the chapters in the RBMS 
volume are based on tape transcripts of 
the presentations, rather than formal 
written papers. Unfortunately, the Pe-
ters and Brennan transcripts escaped 
rigorous scrutiny by author and editor-
they abound in homonyms and missing 
words that in some instances merely 
annoy or amuse, but in others hopelessly 
obscure the meaning. In the electronic 
environment it is crucial to remember 
that spelling checkers do not replace edi-
tors!-Sem C. Sutter, University of Chi-
cago, Chicago, Illinois. 

Heim, Michael. TI1e Metaphysics of Virtual 
Reality. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 
1993. 175p. $21 (ISBN 0-19-508178-1). 
Our world is being changed by infor-

mation technologies in ways we cannot 
claim to understand fully. Exploration of 
the nature and extent of the changes is a 
job for philosophers as well as for social 
scientists and others. Michael Heim is 
described on this book's dust jacket as 
being "known internationally as 'the 
philosopher of cyberspace."' He has 

Book Reviews 87 

published a philosophical study of word 
processing (Electric Language, 1987), as 
well as a translation of Martin Heideg-
ger's Metaphysical Foundations of Logic 
(1984). This collection of essays explores 
word processing, online searching, hy-
pertext, and computer outliners, and 
discusses Heidegger's and Marshall 
McLuhan' s views ·on technology before 
turning, in the last five chapters, to vir-
tual reality, "the totally inclusive com-
puter simulation." The approach is to try 
to make connections between the views 
of philosophers like Plato and Leibniz on 
the one hand, and questions about the 
nature and consequences of new infor-
mation technologies on the other. But the 
discussions of the philosophers often 
seem ornamental rather than structural, 
and the best parts of the book do not rely 
on a philosophical background. There is, 
for instance, a lucid and straightforward 
discussion in Chapter 8, ''The Essence of 
VR," of different facets of, and ap-
proaches to, virtual reality, which seems 
to owe nothing to philosophical ances-
tors. A discussion in Chapter 7 of life in 
electronic worlds or cyberspace is of the 
sort one finds in good popular ma-
gazines, and owes more to William Gib-
son, the cyberpunk author, than to Plato 
or Leibniz. Where philosophy clearly 
makes a difference, it is not a very im-
pressive one. Virtual reality is poten-
tially indistinguishable from the real 
world, Heim says, but it has to be kept 
not-quite-real "or it will lessen the pull 
on imagination" and become ''bland and 
mundane." How can it be kept not-quite-
real? Alluding to Heideggerian themes 
of finitude, temporality, and care, Heim 
goes on to suggest, very briefly, that a 
virtual world need not "duplicate the 
deadlines of the real world," that it can 
offer total safety, unlike the dangerous 
real world, and that "with the help of 
intelligent software agents, cares will 
weigh on us more lightly." (This is the 
way to avoid becoming ''bland and mun-
dane"?) If this is metaphysics, it is de-
finitely a low-calorie, less filling brand. 
Some of the discussions are seriously 
misleading; that on Boolean search logic 
seems not to be clear a bout the difference 



88 College & Research Libraries 

between and and or, and is generally a 
muddle. The discussions of the philoso-
phers are sometimes anachronistic and 
hyperbolic (this may reflect the influence 
of Heidegger), the style definitely that of 
a pop philosopher. (Leibniz' s God is de-
scribed as the Central System Operator 
or sysop: "Without a sysop, no one could 
get on line to reality.") All in all, this is 
not an impressive contribution to our 
understanding of the new electronic 
world. 

The book is an editorial disaster. The 
essays in this collection (four previously 
published in print, one published elec-
tronically) overlap and duplicate each 
other extensively. The discussion of 
Leibniz in Chapter 3 is repeated almost 
verbatim in Chapter 7; the same text is 
used to support views on hypertext and 
on virtual reality. The same discussion of 
Heidegger occurs twice, in Chapters 1 
and 5, and one five-line quotation is re-
pea ted three times. There is a glossary, 
''Useful vocabulary for the metaphysics 
of virtual reality," that includes a de-
scription of what the metaphysics of vir-
tual reality is about; but the last five 
chapters of this book do not fit the de-
scription. The Preface says that the "cen-
tral philosopher'' of Chapter 2 will be 
Blaise Pascal; but Pascal is not men-
tioned there. Oxford's reputation is not 
enhanced by this book. The designer has 
not helped matters. Rectos (odd pages) 
have two page numbers (page 15 carries 
the numbers 14/15) and versos lack 
pagination. A copy of page 14 would be 
unidentifiable as page 14. This is not an 
improvement over conventional prac-
tice.-Patrick Wilson, University of Cal-
ifornia, Berkeley. 

Leidenschaft und Bildung: Zur Geschichte 
der Frauenarbeit in Bibliotheken. Ed. 
by Helga Ludtke. B~rlin: Orlanda 
Frauenverlag. 1992. 304 p. 39.80 DM 
(ISBN 3-922166-79-2). 
With this volume Helga Ludtke adds 

a substantial chapter to the underdocu-
mented history of women librarians. The 
study focuses on women's roles in the 
development of libraries and the femini-
zation of librarianship, looking primarily 

January 1994 

at the experience in Germany. Leidens-
chaft und Bildung is a compilation of con-
temporary essays, older articles (dating 
from 1901-47), biographical sketches, in-
terviews, and photographs. It covers the 
period between 1895 and 1945 in Ger-
many, focusing specifically on public 
librarians; however, comparisons to aca-
demic libraries appear throughout the 
volume. Of special note is an eleven-
page annotated bibliography on the 
topic of women librarians in German 
public libraries, which includes publica-
tions dating from 1897 through 199L 

Perhaps the most interesting part of 
the book is the essays written by librari-
ans between 1895 and 1945, because the 
texts of the period best illustrate the is-
sues then under discussion and clarify 
the views held by female librarians and 
their male colleagues. One of the · most 
enlightening of these primary documents 
was written by Lotte Bergtel-Schleif, a 
communist librarian imprisoned in 1943 
because of her work with a resistance 
group. In her 1947 article she addresses 
the sensitive issue of librarians' complic-
ity with Nazi censorship. She outlines 
the extent to which librarians con-
tributed to the Nazi regime, describing 
how they removed "degenerate" mate-
rial from library shelves, well aware that 
much of the literature and works of mod-
ern thought condemned to bonfires 
formed the core of their collections. 

The third section of the book profiles 
individual women librarians, including 
pioneers in German librarians hip as well 
as more representative figures. The biog-
raphies of library directors Bona Peiser, 
Bennata Otten, and Marie Norenberg il-
lustrate the important contributions 
women played in the development of li-
braries and library programs in Germany 
before 1933. The article "LebensHiufe" 
presents the lives and careers of eight 
"typical" librarians. Interviewing librar-
ians born between 1907 and 1923, the 
authors explore a variety of issues, in-
cluding working conditions, job satisfac-
tion, career advancement, and the effects 
of political changes on librarian5hip. 
Though documenting these "fore-
mothers" of librarianship is crucial and