College and Research Libraries


274 College & Research Libraries 

might take the lead in mapping these 
new frontiers. 

If this volume represents a forceful 
. social critique of the current state of in-

formation technologies in academia, it is 
no Luddite call for return to an idealized 
pretechnological past. In fact, it is their 
clear recognition of the powerful poten-
tial of new information technologies that 
motivates colloquium participants to 
demand that these be fully realized for 
women and other marginalized social 
groups. In the contested terrain of infor-
mation technology, it is only by address-
ing the embedded social relations that 
this technolandscape of enticing prom-
ises will prove more than an exclusive 
preserve.-Joan Ariel, University of Cali-
fornia, Irvine. 

White, Howard D., Marcia J. B.ates, and 
Patrick Wilson. For Information Spe-
cialists: Interpretations of Reference and 
Bibliographic Work. Norwood, N.J.: 
Ablex, 1992. 310 p. $24.50 (ISBN Q.. 
89391-983-7). 
This collection of articles by three li-

brary school faculty focuses on three as-
pects of information work. Each is the 
topic of one of the book's three main 
sections: reference work, bibliographic 
writing, and literature searching. In the 
short fourth and final section, Howard 
White sets out to provide an integrated 
view of what information specialists do. 

In his introduction White says that the 
authors "offer ... insights into human 
aspects of the profession [i.e., informa-
tion work] that are seldom treated else-
where." With a few exceptions his 
promise, however, goes largely unful-
ffiled. While some interesting notions 
emerge, it is difficult on the whole to say 
to whom his book would appeal. It lacks 
a solid focus, and the reader moves 
through a somewhat bewildering array of 
topics with quite different approaches. 

Five of the book's eleven chapters are 
rewrites of articles that appeared over 
the years in journals. There is a short 
article on the nature of a reference book, 
replete with charts and empirical data, a 
speculative treatise on the uniqueness of 
librarians and information specialists, 

May1994 

and several articles about techniques for 
conducting online searches. At one point 
in the book we have a discussion of Karl 
Popper's "world 3" theory as it relates to 
information science, while at another we 
get a discussion of online versus manual 
database searching infused with neolo-
gisms such as BIBBLE: "To BIBBLE is to 
look for a bibliography already pre-
pared, before launching into the effort of 
preparing one." 

What theme or themes unite these dis-
parate pieces is far from clear despite 
White's claim that "there is a great deal of 
theme-passing from author to author." 
The articles on literature searching seem 
to have a specialized pedagogical pur-
pose that little serves the general inter-
pretive ambitions of the book. Many of 
the book's observations seem to be com-
monsense notions recast in an academic 
parlance sufficiently ponderous so as to 
make them sound insightful. ''Libraries, as 
guarantors of 'permanent publication,' 
ratify the choices of publishers generally, 
but of some much more than others." 

In the final chapter, however, White 
makes some observations that raise im-
portant questions about librarianship. 
He writes that most librarians, once fin-
ished with school, do not read library 
and information science research litera-
ture because "they do not need to; or, as 
they would claim, because it does not 
tell them what they need to know." A 
remarkable admission! If it so, why, we 
might ask, should librarians read this 
book? What does White's observation 
suggest about the relevance of profes-
sional research to professional practice? 
If a librarian, upon completing formal 
training in the library and information 
science, has little need for the research of 
library and information science, then what 
is its purpose? What is it about the whole 
professional educational endeavor that 
makes library and information science rele-
vant to formal education but irrelevant after-
ward? Nevertheless, White's observation is, 
in my view, the most important of the book 
and raises far-reaching questions. 

White then immediately adds some-
thing that makes the above an even more 
interesting and pressing issue. ''The 



mandate of librarians to keep certain 
segments of external memory alive is 
essentially a political task, calling for 
knowledge that is ethical and situation-
specific rather than technical and gen-
eral in the style of L&IS research." This 
claim, if true, complicates both our view 
of the profession and our notion of the 
kind of education that is most appropri-
ate for librarians. Librarians, according 
to this view, would be ethicists, involved 
in making important value judgments in 
the administration of institutional re-
sources. Critical to their success would 
be a deep understanding of the func-
tions and limitations of the particular 
institutions they serve, hence the impor-
tance of the"situation-specific" nature of 
their knowledge. Some of the important 
issues in current librarianship seem to 
illustrate this view. Right to know, access 
versus ownership, and resistance to cen-
sorship are major concerns involving 
questions of social ethics insofar as li-
brary services are valued as moderately 
scarce resources to which people can 
make moral, political and legal claims. 

It is disappointing that White does not 
develop his idea of librarian as ethicist. 
He does say that "aside from their bibliog-
raphic expertise, the 'science' of work-
ing librarians is policy . . ." Here then 
reemerges a tension and ambiguity be-
tween the librarian as technician; i.e., 
information specialist, and librarian as 
humanist; i.e., as ethicist and public pol-
icy advocate. An exploration of this ten-
sion might have some bearing on the 
phenomenon of library school closings 
in recent years-since the closings are 
due, many librarians argue, to funda-
mental misconceptions about the nature 
and value of the profession. For Informa-
tion Specialists may be of use and interest 
for library school students, but for li-
brarians its points of interest are few.-
Stephen P. Foster, Central Michigan 
University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. 

Rosenberg, Jane Aikin. The Nation's 
Great Library: Herbert Putnam and the 
Library of Congress, 1899-1939. Cham-
paign, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1993. 
235p. $39.95 (ISBN 0-252-02110-4). 

Book Reviews 275 

Jane Rosenberg has written a fine 
book on Herbert Putnam's forty-year 
tenure at the Library of Congress (LC). It 
is a solid and readable history of several 
complex issues: LC's role in American 
library development; the vicissitudes of 
Congressional support; the library com-
munity's reactions to Putnam's manage-
ment of LC services to libraries; and the 
role of LC in the development of librari-
anship as a profession. In relatively few 
text pages (165), relatively many pages 
of notes (51), nineteen period pictures, 
and a graceful "Essay on Sources," the . 
author bestows equal measures of schol-
arship, but somewhat uneven insight on 
each of her four stated themes. 

The book is a rewritten version of the 
author's 1988 dissertation, "The Library 
of Congress and the Professionalization 
of American Librarianship, 1896-1939." 
Rosenberg's discussion of this theme is 
definitive. Similarly, her treatment of the 
intertwined topics of LC's role in Ameri-
can library development and Putnam's vi-
sion of LC as the national library may be 
confidently labeled "required reading'' 

~ !~ CHRISTIAN 
PERIODICAL 

- INDEX •!• Over 90 
Index covers a Titles 

•!• Beginning 
broad spectrum of 

in 1956 knowledge from 

•!• Published 
an evangelical 

Three Christian 
Times a perspective. 
Year