reviews Book Reviews 285 lent reading, hearing reading, reading in bed (highly recommended), reading pictures, the shape of the book, trans- lating as reading, and memory and reading. Within a single chapter, the reader is led from Augustine to Emerson and from medieval jongleurs to workers in Cuban cigar factories in the nineteenth century. Although some may be confused or put off by this “method,” the impact of the book de- rives precisely from Manguel’s ability to juxtapose the disparate and the dif- ferent. Through it all, though, there are at least two themes that connect the tis- sue of examples and episodes that stretches throughout the book. One is Manguel’s devotion to the privacy of reading. For Manguel, the act of read- ing—no matter where or how it is done—is the quintessential private act. Indeed, it is the private nature of read- ing that mocks any attempt to write the history of reading. Reading defines a zone of personal space that no one or no thing can take from us. If we have nothing else, we have at least that space. However, it is not an introverted, alienated privacy that attracts Manguel. Rather, privacy is the precondition for creating, through reading, bonds of com- munity across time and space. Reading becomes an assertion of fellowship and solidarity; readers meet other readers. In a book packed with all manner of illus- trations, one in particular stands out: a two-page spread of a shot of three men in suits, overcoats, and hats silently browsing the shelves of a bombed-out library in London, in 1940. Knee deep in detritus, the gents respectfully go about their business as if nothing would ever deter them. They will persist alone to- gether, readers each and all. The book’s other theme anchors it firmly in the postmodern present: the omnipotence of the reader. The author, remember, is dead. There are only read- ers and texts, and it is readers who con- struct the texts. The author is only an author; the author must die—or least disappear—in order for the text to live. Manguel bestows on the reader an un- bounded freedom to create and re-cre- ate texts at will. In the kingdom of the book, the reader is sovereign. Yet as appealing as this voluntarism is, it surely overlooks the extent to which readers, too, exist in contexts—contexts that constrain and direct their imagina- tions. If we truly are what we read, then the latter in some measure defines the limits of our creative freedom. However one feels about the book, it is hard to come away from it without liking its author. He is warm and invit- ing, and he has a Borgesian sense of playfulness that allows everyone to feel at home in his crazy sandbox. Who could not like someone who asserts a truism that few would dare acknowl- edge: “I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape. . . .” Right on! But I must confess to finding the cover of Manguel’s book merely interesting rather than compelling. However, do not throw it away. Inside, it contains a “reader ’s timeline” running from 4000 BCE to the present, suitable for display as a handy reference guide. If you want a history of reading from A History of Reading, that is where you will get it.— Michael Ryan, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia The National Electronic Library: A Guide to the Future for Library Managers. Ed. Gary M. Pitkin. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr. (The Greenwood Li- brary Management Collection), 1996. 192p. $55. ISBN 0-313-29613-8. Who could not like someone who asserts a truism that few would dare acknowledge: “I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape.” 286 College & Research Libraries May 1997 “The future ain’t what it used to be” was a comment I heard recently at a pro- fessional conference. How right that person was. Who would have predicted in June 1993 that a piece of software— Mosaic—distributed for free by a com- paratively little-known research center (the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois) would have recast the future of the information industry so radically. Today, we cannot imagine a world that will not be Web- based. This collection of essays purports to be a guide to this redrawn future for library managers. In his introduction, Gary Pitkin states that the volume focuses on “where we have been, where we are, and what we need to be in terms of suc- cess in the electronic environment.” What the introduction does not state is that the papers were presented at the 1995 conference Computing for Small Libraries, held in Washington, D.C. It also does not state that the presenters were asked to respond to Brian Hawkins’s seminal 1994 Serials Review article (“Creating the Library of the Fu- ture: Incrementalism Won’t Get Us There!”) attesting to the need for a Na- tional Electronic Library (NEL), and de- fining a variety of models that might fit this need. Several of the authors refer in detail to the Hawkins article (and oth- ers that he wrote on the same topic), so it would have been helpful to state this up front. It takes real skill to compile a set of essays about the future of libraries that transcends the level of “just another set of opinion pieces.” Two recent examples of such collections from the library pro- fession are University Libraries and Schol- arly Communication (A. M. Cummings et al, 1992) and Preferred Futures for Libraries (Richard Dougherty and Carol Hughes, 1991). The volume under review, al- though containing some interesting chapters, does not reach that level of vision and prescience as a whole. The only essay that comes close is Robert Heterick’s endpaper “Are Libraries Nec- essary in the Revolutionized Environ- ment?” (Heterick is currently president of EDUCOM, and is a frequent and elo- quent writer on the future of informa- tion technology in higher education.) However, the writing generally is articu- late and thoughtful. Weaknesses of the collection include: (1) lack of a definition of “the national electronic library” and how it differs from the National Digital Library (NDL) initiative of the Library of Congress. These two terms are bandied around indiscriminately, in many cases the one and the other being interchangeable; (2) omission of the fact that the articles are responding to Brian Hawkins’s essay on the NEL (as well as the failure to include the Hawkins essay for reference); (3) a retrospective focus (“where we have been and where we are”) rather than a future-oriented focus (“developing new ways of perceiving, thinking and behav- ing”). The first section of the book centers on the concept of an NEL and Hawkins’s models for it. Starting off the volume with a challenge, Joy Hughes and Karyle Butcher of Oregon State University cou- rageously address what they see as the need to “reallocate library acquisitions budgets” in order to fund collaborative efforts to build the NEL. They cite Hawkins’s trend analysis figures indicat- ing that “by the year 2001, the combined impact of inflation and the growth of in- formation would result in our libraries being able to purchase 2 per cent of the total information acquired only two de- cades before.” Hughes and Butcher ad- dress the various models outlined by Hawkins, and then focus on the need for collaboration to overcome such bar- riers as lack of appropriate copyright/ site-licensing regulations, lack of stan- dards, and the inability to develop cost- effective ways to provide training on all fronts. This message is echoed by Alan Book Reviews 287 The second section of the book fo- cuses on facilities, services, and plan- ning in the library of the future. From the collection development point of view, Johanna Sherrer questions the old assumption that current clients’ needs are automatically being met as the re- sult of earlier collection development decisions, and emphasizes the need to develop selection expertise across for- mats. She provides an excellent list of competencies required of collection de- velopment staff in the electronic era. David Kohl and William Gosling present well-articulated essays on how public services (Kohl) and technical services (Gosling) are, or should be, approach- ing the reengineering of both service ethic and process. What does this volume add to our knowledge on the managerial implica- tions of new technology? Not much. How far does it go to assuage our uncertain- ties and guide us toward the future? Not very far. Is it worth reading? Yes, if only to emphasize the fact that we still have a long way to go to develop “new ways of perceiving, thinking and behaving.” I would like to add that I am a great believer in first impressions and this book fails to make a good one. It does not excite attention in the way that so many print offerings do in today’s high- tech, desktop publishing environment. There are no glitzy diagrams of infor- mation flow or eye-grabbing designs à la Wired magazine. The only illustrations are in the chapter on facilities planning by Delmus Williams, which includes photos of an early Univac computer and Durer’s woodcut of Erasmus. Neither of these seems a particularly good illus- tration of either future technology or Hawkins’s point of view that the library is not a place. There is, however, an in- dex, a list of contributors with their af- filiations, and an extensive bibliogra- phy.—Gillian M. McCombs, University at Albany, State University of New York Charnes in his chapter on consortia and the NEL. Not surprisingly, because he is Executive Director of the Colorado Alli- ance of Research Libraries (CARL), Charnes proposes the consortial struc- ture as a way to achieve the collabora- tion that Hughes and Butcher put for- ward. The concept of the NEL is handled from the perspective of both academic institutions (Thomas Peischl) and pub- lic libraries (Agnes Griffin). Peischl re- minds librarians that academe has big- ger things to think about than the NEL, such as “the future of information ser- vices across the university,” distance learning, productivity, and diversity. Meanwhile, Griffin effectively describes the differing approaches that public li- brarians are taking as they build the public on-ramp to the information su- perhighway. She succinctly addresses issues that are crucial for librarians, al- though she does not adequately high- light the distinction between universal access and universal service. Faye Vowell reiterates what we all know to be the obvious—that LIS curricula will need to be flexible and responsive to changing information needs. She calls on LIS educators to provide continuing education for midcareer librarians, but does not address the retooling of those self-same library school professors. 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