reviews


Book Reviews  285

 

 

 

Book Reviews 

Brophy, Peter, et al. Access to Campus Li­
brary Services by Distance Users: Final 
Report. Preston, U.K.: CERLIM, 1996. 
80p. £25, paper (ISBN 0-9066-9497-3). 

Goodall, Deborah, and Peter Brophy. A 
Comparable Experience? Library Support 
for Franchised Courses in Higher Educa­
tion. Preston, U.K.: CERLIM (British 
Library Research Report 33), 1997. 
233p. £20, paper (ISBN 090-6694-655). 

Brophy, Peter, et al. Self-Service Systems 
in Libraries: Final Report. Preston, U.K.: 
CERLIM, 1996. 119p. £25, paper (ISBN 
0-906694-95-7). 

These three reports from the Centre for 
Research in Library and Information 
Management (CERLIM), based at the 
University of Central Lancashire, present 
detailed examinations of the design and 
provision of library services in three dif­
ferent distance learning environments. 
CERLIM was established in 1993 to con­
duct practical research to support opera­
tional work in libraries. The results and 
evaluation of each research project under­
taken are disseminated in reports such as 
those reviewed here. 

Access to Campus Library and Informa­
tion Services by Distance Users is the final 
report of experiments conducted at three 
academic institutions in Europe to test the 
capabilities of information technology 
(IT) to provide access to library catalogs, 
databases, interlibrary loan, and reference 
service. Each experiment was designed 
according to the particular distance learn­
ing environment at each institution: at the 
University of Central Lancashire for 
courses at small remote locations, at 
Dublin University for service to individu­
als, and at the University of the Aegean 
(Greece) to provide connection between 
two of four libraries located on separate 
islands. Careful to note that this research 
was conducted in small-scale projects, 
which could in part account for their suc­

cess, the report concludes that 
the experiments were success­
ful; two of the three have be­
come permanent services. 

A Comparable Experience? ex­
amines library services pro­
vided to franchised courses in 
the United Kingdom. Franchised is de­
fined as those courses taught away from 
the main university campus, but with tra­
ditional pedagogical methods. This study 
was conducted in response to a concern 
about the lack of appropriate library re­
sources at the remote sites as the number 
of franchised courses and distance learn­
ing students increase. The report exam­
ines how library services are provided 
and how students cope with the lack of 
services, and provides recommendations 
for steps to ensure that franchised stu­
dents are not disadvantaged in terms of 
access to library resources. 

Self-Service Systems in Libraries presents 
results of an investigation conducted Feb­
ruary 1995 through March 1996 on the 
development of self-service IT systems 
based in libraries. The investigation was 
a collaborative project of CERLIM, the 
National Library for Psychology and 
Education, and Dynix. Its specific objec­
tives were to assess the requirements for 
self-service, examine the implementation 
of a service and its operation, explore the 
implications of the shift to open systems, 
identify areas for further analysis and 
development, and develop a functional 
specification. This report presents the 
functional specification objective in detail; 
other objectives are reported in other 
CERLIM publications. 

Although all these studies and experi­
ments were conducted in the United 
Kingdom and Europe, they provide a 
valuable resource for any academic library 
exploring options for implementing and 
providing service to distance education 

285 



286 College & Research Libraries May 1998 

and off-campus students. Themes com­
mon to all distance education programs 
are threaded through, and highlighted in, 
all three reports, particularly those deal­
ing with communication, staffing, train­
ing, and funding. 

Of particular interest is the distance 
education report that describes in some 
detail the three experiments conducted, 
the equipment and technology used, and 
the surrounding issues and implications 
of establishing and providing service to 
remote students. The experiments were 
grounded in the principles that remote 
service must be as near as possible to on-
campus service, conform to open-system 
standards, be cost-effective, and be simple 
to install, maintain, and use. The report 
concludes that the experiments demon­
strated that a high level of service can be 
obtained using a combination of low-cost 
telecommunications and traditional de­
livery methods. The experiments also 
demonstrated, however, that obstacles 
remain, including the need for improved 
user interfaces and ongoing user training. 
In addition, increased staffing needs may 
be expensive, and therefore a commit­
ment must be made by institutions to pro­
vide extra funding for distance education. 
Collaboration among institutions also is 
essential, and librarians must be involved 
in course/curriculum design for distance 
education courses and must work with 
publishers to provide electronic versions 
of their products. 

Issues that arose during the course of 
these experiments are typical of the prob­
lems all libraries face when instituting 
service to students off-site. The provision 
of access to OPACs and databases, prob­
lems of site licensing and copyright, tech­
nical problems with interfaces, and docu­
ment delivery all are issues with which 
libraries are familiar. Although these 
problems may not be technically difficult 
to resolve, their resolution will take time, 
negotiation, and careful attention. For 
example, the distance education project 
determined that scanning and file trans­

fer were feasible both technically and in 
terms of cost but were not used because 
of potential violation of copyright laws. 

Another interesting approach used by 
the experiments was the use of a refer­
ence surrogate, or intermediary, located 
at the remote site who could perform a 
reference interview before submitting the 
request by e-mail to a subject specialist at 
the university library. However, use of a 
surrogate works only when centralized 
remote locations are used (such as a pub­
lic library or a computer center) in which 
a librarian is present and would not work 
if service were directed toward individu­
als’ homes. 

As an outgrowth of the distance edu­
cation project, the “Libraries Without 
Walls Toolkit” was developed on 
CERLIM’s Web site (http://www.dcu.ie/ 
library/bibdel/index.html). The tool kit 
is designed to assist librarians with de­
veloping services for distant users. Use­
ful and informative, it provides help and 
advice on topics such as telecommunica­
tions, electronic documents, copyright, 
and the costs of establishing and main­
taining service. 

The self-service report also will be of 
interest to those in academic libraries at­
tempting to increase patron self-service 
through the use of IT systems. The report 
analyzes each of 41 potential self-service 
functions in detail, describing the require­
ments for integration of automation and 
networking capabilities so that services 
are available both within the library and 
remotely. One of these, a self-service 
checkout system, was installed at the 
University of Central Lancashire as part 
of the project. The report discusses sur­
rounding issues and presents eleven rec­
ommendations to be addressed in the 
future. 

Of less interest is A Comparable Experi­
ence? Based on a study of library services 
already in place to franchised courses in 
Britain, this report analyzes common 
themes from the points of view of uni­
versity librarians, college librarians (at the 

http:http://www.dcu.ie


 

Book Reviews 287 

remote sites), students, and tutors. It pre­
sents an interesting view of services cur­
rently provided to franchised students, 
along with each group’s perceptions of 
those services and the libraries. Recom­
mendations include enhanced communi­
cation between university librarians and 
college librarians, greater collaboration 
with instructors, provision of more cop­
ies of materials at both university and 
college libraries, allocation of additional 
funding, and implementation of more 
user and librarian training.—Barbara J. 
D’Angelo, Southeastern Louisiana Univer­
sity, Hammond. 

Hjørland, Birger. Information Seeking and 
Subject Representation: An Activity– 
Theoretical Approach to Information Sci­
ence. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr. 
(New Directions in Information Man­
agement, no. 34), 1997. 213p. alk. pa­
per, $59.95 (ISBN 0-313-29893-9). LC 
96-51136. 

Hjørland is a member of the faculty of the 
Royal School of Librarianship in 
Copenhagen; his academic background is 
in psychology and information science. 
This work should interest theoretically 
inclined research librarians because it is 
centered on information gathering by and 
for researchers—indeed, it is almost ex­
clusively focused on researchers. It is a 
work on theoretical foundations, not of 
practical details; and it has a very strong 
programmatic aim. The author wants to 
change the orientation of information sci­
ence research from what he sees as the 
dominant individualist and subjectivist 
approach to information science’s prob­
lems, to an objectivist, group-oriented 
approach that completely accepts and 
appreciates the social character of scien­
tific and scholarly research. He refers to 
this orientation as “methodological col­
lectivism,” contrasting it with an estab­
lished “methodological individualism.” 

The author describes various psycho­
logical theories favored by, or consonant 
with, different approaches to information 

science problems, contrasting, for ex­
ample, a widespread affinity for an infor­
mation-processing model of human cog­
nitive processes with the approach he 
prefers—activity theory. This last ap­
proach is derived from the work of Rus­
sian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and em­
phasizes social and cultural factors in 
cognitive development. Hjørland also 
shows the relationships of information 
science research strategies to philosophi­
cal theories of knowledge, and argues that 
activity theory is highly compatible with 
philosophical pragmatism, both of which 
support the kind of objectivist, socially 
oriented approach he calls methodologi­
cal collectivism. Reflection on 
pragmatism’s view of knowledge and 
activity theory’s approach to cognition 
leads Hjørland to propose that we under­
stand the concept of the subject of a docu­
ment in terms of the document’s episte­
mological or informative potentials, that 
is, potentials for helping to solve research 
problems and thus contribute to knowl­
edge. 

Information needs are to be under­
stood in a similarly public, objective way, 
as relative to scientific problem-solving, 
not (or not primarily) as inner psychologi­
cal states. Literature searching by indi­
vidual researchers must be seen as 
guided, and in a sense disciplined, by 
established practices within the disci­
plines and smaller research communities. 
A fruitful approach in information science 
research is domain analysis, the study of 
the information and communication 
structure of a discipline or smaller spe­
cialized field, with an interest in improv­
ing the information systems available 
within the domain. Such research can 
usefully draw on the history, sociology, 
and philosophy of science as background. 

The proposal, to define the concept of 
a subject in terms of informative poten­
tials, sounds strange if understood as an 
analysis or reconstruction of what people 
ordinarily think about a document’s sub­
ject. But it can be revamped easily into a