reviews 292 College & Research Libraries May 1998 provide an excellent discussion on the effects of technological change on librar­ ies. The essays focus on five areas: assess­ ment of traditional library organizations and services; relationship between librar­ ies and computer services; state and re­ gional consortia; case studies of library organizations; and library–university re­ lationships. Editor Chalres A. Schwartz (University of Massachusetts-Boston) contributes the opening and closing es­ says. He discusses the theory of “bound­ ary spanning,” which identifies ideas and relationships outside traditional thinking and practice that can meet the new chal­ lenges. His closing essay touches again on this theme and how it fits into a bal­ anced organization. In section one, David W. Lewis reviews changes in public services resulting from efforts to make more effective use of new technologies. Next, Herbert S. White em­ phasizes the importance of campus poli­ tics for ensuring support for library ser­ vices. Control of the virtual library is a turf battle for scarce resources. The next section opens with Richard M. Dougherty and Lisa McClure’s essay on the models for realignment of library– computer center relationships and the importance of understanding the differ­ ence between the working “cultures” of librarians and computer center staff. Meredith A. Butler and Stephen F. DeLong discuss reorganization efforts at the University of Albany, and Nina Davis- Millis and Thomas Owens cover similar ground at MIT. The last essay echoes Doughtery and McClure’s discussion of cultural differences between the two groups. The role of state and regional consor­ tia in library reorganization is the empha­ sis of the next section. David E. Kohl dis­ cusses the OhioLink project and its im­ pact on individual library operations, es­ pecially in collection development. Bar­ bara McFadden Allen and William A. Gosling look at the Committee on Insti­ tutional Cooperation’s work among ma­ jor research institutions. Sue O. Medina and William C. Highfill discuss how de­ velopment of computer networks facili­ tated library cooperation among Alabama academic libraries. Derrie B. Roark closes the section by presenting the successful use of centralized, directed technological change within the Florida Community College System. Rebecca R. Martin, Caroline M. Kent, Joan Giesecke and Katherine Walter, Gloriana St. Clair, Rita A. Scherrei, and Peggy Seiden contribute case studies on restructuring efforts at Vermont, Harvard, Nebraska-Lincoln, Penn State, the Uni­ versity of California system, and seven leading liberal arts colleges. Scherrei’s study of the effects of reorganization on midcareer librarians in the University of California system is especially good. The final part presents essays by Charles B. Osburn and Douglas G. Birdsall examin­ ing the relationship between libraries and universities and the political aspects of strategic planning. The overall quality of the essays is quite good, and the book provides much for librarians and administrators to con­ sider. It echoes and complements many of the themes presented in recent books such as Gateways to Knowledge (MIT Press 1997, reviewed in C&RL 59:1). All librar­ ians and library administrators would benefit from this work, as would univer­ sity administrators.—Stephen L. Hupp, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Slaughter, Sheila, and Larry L. Leslie. Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University. Bal­ timore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1997. 276p. alk. paper, $39.95 (ISBN: 0-8018-5549-7). LC 96-49956. The title of this timely volume is deliber­ ately provocative. Without even mention­ ing the dreaded and dated Marx, the au­ thors have produced a convincing analysis of the transition of the academy from its own protected form of feudalism Book Reviews 293 to a predatory capitalism. This is not happy reading, but few librarians who have spent their careers in university li­ braries will fail to recognize their own institutions in the transformations the authors chart. The institution for which I work recently hired a manager for library enterprises. Now I know why. The book’s argument is straightfor­ ward. The globalization (hated word) of the marketplace has diminished the piece of the pie available to European and North American economies. Govern­ ments in turn have retreated from tradi­ tional forms of support for higher educa­ tion, at once cutting back and putting more strings on allocated funds. Univer­ sities have responded by seeking new revenue streams from private sources, most notably from the marketplace. And this development, the authors argue, is producing changes in the academy “as great as the changes in academic labor which occurred in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.” In other words, what they claim to be describing are long-term changes in the ethos, aims, and manage­ ment of universities—changes that have wedded them and their futures to the vagaries of the global marketplace. The social and economic entente between the mandarins and society, forged in the late nineteenth century, virtually insulated faculty from the competition of the mar­ ketplace. According to the authors, this has all but collapsed. The discipline of the profession has been supplanted by the discipline of the marketplace. Faculty and their knowledge are in the process of be­ ing transformed into commodities. Francis Bacon was fond of touting the power of knowledge. In the late twenti­ eth century, knowledge is capital and capital is power—except if your knowl­ edge is not valued. Librarians know about these things. The authors focus on public institu­ tions in the Anglophone world—North America, Australia, and the United King- dom—and find similar trends in each. Canada is often the odd country out, but it too is realizing that national and pro­ vincial educational policies have to be­ come much more market sensitive. To the evidence of the numbers, they add an ex­ tensive series of interviews with faculty and administrators. Taken together, the conclusion is inescapable that what is occurring in universities today is not merely local, but global. What, then, are the consequences to universities of this structural shift? Some have been evident for a while. Those de­ partments and disciplines closest to the marketplace are those with the most clout leverage within institutions—hence the increasing dominance of the science, tech­ nology, and medicine faculties in the con­ temporary research university. They have the knowledge that the market values, and they traditionally have had the clos­ est ties to industry within universities. At the same time, those disciplines and ser­ vices farthest from the market are the los­ ers: the humanities, social sciences, and libraries. To the winners go the spoils: funding, prestige, and relative autonomy within the institution. The rise of market- oriented academic labor heralds other important shifts. Scientists increasingly blur the distinction between “pure” and “applied” research; teaching functions fall further down on the agenda; and ten­ ure itself stands precariously like the medieval guild system before the on­ slaught of merchant capitalism. The idea of the university as a community of schol­ ars erodes, and faculty governing bodies come to look more and more like the Ro­ man Senate under the Caesars. These are not trivial changes. Collectively, they threaten to efface all that is unique and distinctive about universities in the pub­ lic eye. The intrusion of the marketplace may well have brought to a close that lofty independence won by higher learning in the nineteenth century. The late twenti­ eth-century university is increasingly ac­ countable to a variety of new constituen­ cies. 294 College & Research Libraries The authors are not altogether san­ guine about these developments. It is far from clear that universities are well posi­ tioned to compete in the marketplace. Risk entails the possibility of failure. And what happens then? Moreover, the com­ ing of the capitalist regime brings with it a new entourage of administrators to oversee the “entrepreneurial university” and its various initiatives, thus further draining institutional resources. The cul­ tural repositioning of universities in so­ ciety is deeply worrying: Will they be seen simply as appendages of the market­ place? instruments of national economic policy? If tenure survives, and its achieve­ ment is becoming increasingly problem­ atic for junior faculty caught between Cardinal Newman and Milton Friedman, how will they be evaluated? Is there any way out of this academic twilight zone? The authors tend to ignore the growth of development offices in pub­ lic and private universities, and yet that has been the strategy of first resort in most institutions. The only remedy the authors May 1998 can suggest is the Darwinian belt-tight­ ening offered by responsibility-centered budgeting. Because I work for a univer­ sity that practices this “enlightened” ap­ proach to resource allocation, I can only say that I live in the future and it does not work. It encourages the rich to get richer and the poor to become poorer. For research libraries, it can be especially per­ verse because they are completely cost centers as opposed to revenue centers. Academic Capitalism does not address the special problems faced by research li­ braries. But its message seems to be: Be­ cause you cannot beat it (the market), join it. As museum gift shops metamorphose into mini-emporia selling everything from books to pasta, do libraries look to a similar marketing strategy? Do we charge entrance fees? circulation fees? information fees? It is not at all clear to this reviewer what our niche in the glo­ bal marketplace is or could be. But be­ cause we now have a manager of library enterprises, it is not my problem!— Michael Ryan, University of Pennsylvania.