reviews 288 College & Research Libraries May 1997 The Evolving Virtual Library: Visions and Case Studies. Ed. Laverna M. Saunders. Medford, N.J.: Information Today, 1996. 153p. $39.50. ISBN 1- 57387-013-7. LC 95-39544. This book includes eight essays that to- gether present an excellent overview of the development of the virtual library in the first half of the 1990s. Four con- ference presentations from a day-long session at the Eighth Annual Comput- ers in Libraries Conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1993, form the core of the volume. The case studies (“how we did it” essays) address the practical issues faced in developing the virtual library in a range of settings: a regional K–12 network, a public library system, a statewide university library network, and a major academic research center. These conference papers are supple- mented by three additional essays that broaden the scope to the international level and address content issues related to electronic texts and electronic pub- lishing. An introductory essay by Laverna M. Saunders and Maurice Mitchell contextualizes the diverse es- says by tracing the development of the virtual library in various settings. The editor, Laverna M. Saunders, Dean of the Library and Instructional and Learning Support at Salem State College in Massachusetts, is an author- ity on virtual libraries. She has written extensively on the subject in various journals, including Computers in Libraries for which she is a contributing editor. She also edited a collection of papers from the Seventh Annual Computers in Libraries Conference, which was pub- lished in 1993. The credentials of the various contributors to this volume also reflect expertise and an intimate knowl- edge of the projects and issues they ad- dress. The collection includes a service- able index. Most essays include biblio- graphic references, and many are pro- fusely illustrated. Most of the papers in the collection are descriptive rather than analytic. Bernard A. Margolis’s paper presents a description of the information re- sources, especially locally created da- tabases with community information, provided by the Pikes Peak Library sys- tem in Colorado. Papers by Connie Stout and George S. Machovec are “how we did it” case studies. Stout de- scribes how the State of Texas overcame numerous barriers (political, economic, institutional, technological) in develop- ing a statewide network linking K-12 classrooms, educators, and community members. As an interesting contrast, Machovec describes how Arizona State University (ASU) took the lead in devel- oping network connectivity on a regional basis for various constituencies. Machovec also describes ASU’s Virtual Library Demonstration Project, where librarians, faculty, and computer experts work together on projects for develop- ing and implementing new computer products and services. Of particular interest to academic li- brarians, Project Mercury at Carnegie Mellon University is perhaps one of the most notable efforts in research and de- velopment of the virtual library at a ma- jor academic research center. Barbara G. Richards describes how the project has approached the goal of creating an infrastructure capable of delivering all types of networked information to desk- top PCs in an environment where the location of users and resources is irrel- evant. She discusses the technical de- tails of architecture and interface de- sign, and describes the range of re- sources and databases available through the campus network. Project Mercury illustrates the importance of collaboration among university com- puter centers and libraries, learned so- cieties, commercial firms, and other universities. Dennis Nicholson presents a brief history of BUBL (Bulletin Board for Li- brarians), an information service for li- Book Reviews 289 brarians in the United Kingdom. Despite minimal funding and reliance on the vol- unteer work of librarians and library school students, BUBL grew rapidly in the early 1990s from a bulletin board to an extensive information resource pro- vider serving librarians throughout the world. The final two essays in the collection address issues of information content in the virtual library, specifically, elec- tronic texts and electronic journals. Su- san Hockey, Director of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities (CETH), established by Rutgers and Princeton in 1991, discusses the center’s efforts to create methodologies for de- veloping, maintaining, and making available electronic texts. Because of the uniqueness of the medium, CETH has worked toward developing stan- dardized text-encoding, as well as meth- ods for collecting and disseminating texts. And it has engaged in extensive educational and support services. Michael Strangelove, publisher of the Internet Business Journal, describes his work in developing the Directory of Elec- tronic Journals and Newsletters and dis- cusses current trends and future pros- pects for electronic journals. In order to prevent “free market forces of profit and privatization” from solely “determin[ing] the shape of scholarly communication,” Strangelove calls for the collaborative efforts of librarians, universities, and learned societies to “produce, archive, disseminate, and le- gitimate” electronic publishing. Strangelove’s call for collaboration is a chord struck throughout the book. Col- laboration nearly equals virtual library as a prominent catchword/phrase of the library literature of the 1990s. Yet, ex- cept for Strangelove’s essay, the oppo- site and equally significant concept of conflict is rarely discussed in this col- lection of essays. The successful projects described in the case studies must surely have faced problems of conflicting interests or turf battles among various constituencies. Some discussion of this would have been en- lightening. Saunders, in her preface to the book, expresses the hope that the case stud- ies would serve as models for others. In the context of the rapidly changing electronic environment, however, these essays are too dated to serve this func- tion as well as they might have in 1993. Nicholson alludes to this in his paper on BUBL. Having written his original draft in June 1993, he found it necessary to add an addendum in August 1994. As he cogently observes, “If you are read- ing this at a much later date, don’t stake your reputation on things being the same.” Although many of the issues ad- dressed in the articles are the same, the lengthy book-publishing cycle re- veals the shortcomings of the mono- graph as a medium of current informa- tion. Perhaps this in itself illustrates the significance of the virtual library in pro- viding access to information on rapidly changing subjects. Despite the shortcomings noted, there is much of value in The Evolving Virtual Library. It is essential professional reading, particularly as an introduction to the multiplicity of issues and ap- proaches to the development of the vir- tual library. It will likely endure as docu- mentation of the virtual library in the last decade of the millennium.—James L. 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