bookreviews


294 College & Research Libraries May 1999 

tents provide background on, and a good 
overview of, the evolution of off-campus 
services since the first conference was 
held in 1982. 

Topics covered at the conference in­
clude design of Web-based tutorials; col­
laboration between universities, and be­
tween traditional and virtual universities, 
faculty and librarians, and main and sat­
ellite campuses; instruction on library re­
sources via a variety of methods, includ­
ing television, e-mail, and video, as well 
as other forms of computer-mediated 
communication; administration of dis­
tance-learning programs; enhancement 
of catalogs for remote access; promotion 
of off-campus services; consideration of 
collection development issues; evaluation 
and assessment of services; and provision 
of remote reference. Particularly interest­
ing are the numerous papers on collabo­
rations forged not only between tradi­
tional institutions, but also between vir­
tual universities and physical universities 
as demonstrated by the agreement be­
tween Walden and Indiana Universities. 

This collection of conference proceed­
ings is a valuable tool for anyone partici­
pating in the provision of off-campus ser­
vices. The papers on practices and proce­
dures will be especially valuable for any 
library initiating services of its own or en­
hancing current services. The discussion 
of the complexities involved in providing 
off-campus service should be especially 
useful in informing librarians and admin­
istrators for purposes of future planning. 
In addition, as the wealth of topics dis­
cussed in the collection demonstrates, off-
campus or distance learning affects all as­
pects of librarianship—from reference to 
instruction to collection development to 
cataloging to administration. As more stu­
dents enroll in distance education pro­
grams, expectations will increase for re­
mote access to the library and to all the 
resources it has traditionally provided. 

One minor complaint: organization of 
the proceedings by theme or subject or the 
inclusion of an index would make brows­
ing through them easier for those inter­
ested in particular topics within distance 

learning. Despite this minor complaint, 
the Off-Campus Library Services Confer­
ence continues to be a valuable forum for 
librarians active in distance learning. The 
examples provided by those who partici­
pated in this conference are exemplary in 
their initiative and leadership in this 
field.—Barbara J. D’Angelo, Southeastern 
Louisiana University, Hammond, LA. 

Grimes, Deborah J. Academic Library Cen­
trality: User Success through Service, Ac­
cess, and Tradition. Chicago: ACRL 
(ACRL Publications in Librarianship, 
no. 50), 1998. 154p. $30, alk. paper 
(ISBN 0838979505). LC 98-19628. 

Academic Library Centrality is based on a 
study aimed at identifying ways that aca­
demic libraries achieve centrality in the 
university’s mission. Grimes discusses old 
conceptions and misconceptions regard­
ing the status of academic libraries and 
seeks a new metaphor for libraries that is 
more appropriate at the turn of the cen­
tury. In doing so, she demonstrates the 
need for librarians to improve their un­
derstanding of the larger academic com­
munity. In addition, she provides evi­
dence of what leaders in academia expect 
of librarians and libraries. This study ar­
gues that librarians must move beyond 
the “heart of the university ” metaphor 
and should examine the library’s actual 
organizational relationships by using the 
concept of centrality. 

“The library is the heart of the univer­
sity.” This claim has been made in publi­
cations, conferences, and public discus­
sions for more than a hundred years. 
Grimes examines the use of this statement 
in historic accounts as well as in recent 
publications, and outlines discrepancies 
between what is implied by the metaphor 
and actual campus realities as demon­
strated by teaching faculty who do not in­
tegrate the library into their instruction, 
by students who use the library as a study 
hall, and by administrators who fail to see 
the potential of librarians as instructors. 

Both the status of library instruction 
programs and the authority granted li­
brary directors are central to Grimes’s ar­



Book Reviews 295 

gument. She describes the emergence of 
bibliographic instruction as a distinct pro­
fessional activity that has transformed the 
way that college and university librarians 
define their roles. Despite the large num­
ber of students and librarians who are in­
volved in BI, school administrations often 
fail to understand the role of the librarian 
in instruction. The author ’s argument, 
that libraries do not function as the “heart 
of the university,” also involves the roles 
played by library directors. Most directors 
are not involved in campus decisions on 
information technology; no do they par­
ticipate at the highest levels of the 
university’s administration. 

Grimes presents concepts of centrality 
through an examination of organizational 
theory and through studies on resource 
allocation and retrenchment. In an at­
tempt to find out what chief academic and 
executive officers think of library central­
ity, the author conducted a survey of five 
universities. She describes the universities 
and discusses their leaders’ responses. 
The results of the survey show that most 
administrators believe that the metaphor 
of the library as the “the heart of the uni­
versity ” is an exaggeration. They empha­
sized that library centrality can only be 
based on the library’s contributions to the 
university’s mission of teaching and re­
search, as well as its national recognition 
or ranking. 

The strength of Grimes’s analysis is in 
her use of powerful theoretical and his­
torical models to analyze higher educa­
tion. Although she admits that there are 
weaknesses in the use of grounded theory 
methodology, she uses it successfully to 
generate conceptual categories from facts. 
Grimes has been very successful in iden­
tifying concepts and theories that reflect 
views of academic library centrality in ac­
tual library experience. Academic Library 
Centrality contains a wealth of references 
for those interested in pursuing this topic 
in greater detail. It is highly recommended 
to library administrators who hope to 
achieve library centrality at their own in-
stitutions.—Constantia Constantinou, Iona 
College, New Rochelle, NY. 

Kilgour, Frederick G. The Evolution of the 
Book. New York and Oxford: Oxford 
Univ. Pr., 1998. 180p. $35, alk. paper 
(ISBN: 0-19-511859-6). LC 97-14430. 

The advent of electronic communication 
has triggered a boom in studies on the his­
tory and future of “the book.” For much 
of the 1990s, it has been one of the major 
growth areas in humanities scholarship, 
invading disciplines and posing new 
questions of old material. “The book” has 
become code for anything and everything 
involved in the creation, production, dis­
semination, and reception of texts: au­
thors authoring, scribes scribbling, print­
ers printing, booksellers selling, readers 
reading. We have a veritable armada of 
monographs and articles on “the book” 
confronting us, much of it sensitive to new 
types of evidence appropriate for new 
questions and issues. 

That being said, the appearance of a 
new monograph on “the evolution of the 
book” would seem to require some com­
pelling justification. Professor Kilgour be­
lieves he has precisely that: “Through his­
torical analysis of the societal needs that 
have invoked the transformations of the 
book, and the technologies that have 
shaped them, The Evolution of the Book aims 
to shed light on the present emergence of 
the electronic book.” He finds his light in 
technology, and his monograph is a com­
pact summary of successive technologies 
of nonverbal communication from the 
Sumerians to the present. His argument 
is, baldly put, that every improvement in 
the technology of the book has resulted 
in the speedier production and dissemi­
nation of knowledge and information. 
The problem is that neither the focus nor 
the argument has anything especially 
helpful to offer by way of a compass for 
the present. 

Reducing the history of the book to a 
history of technology conveniently ig­
nores the wealth of social, cultural, and 
economic evidence we now have avail­
able on the topic. Moreover, Kilgour ’s 
“bullet train” approach to the history of 
book technologies is an odd reprise of a 
style of history writing that I had thought