reviews 170 College & Research Libraries March 2000 This surprisingly reminds one of the debates on library sanctions against South Africa. The Social Responsibilities Round Table Guidelines adopted by many ALA groups noted in section 2.3: “As profession­ als, we must strive to balance our meth­ ods to promote the free flow of informa­ tion with work activities that are morally and politically responsible.” However, the 1990 ALA membership meeting adopted the guidelines with the following change to meet intellectual freedom concerns: “We note that the lack of the free flow of infor­ mation to and from the mass democratic organizations and anti-apartheid institu­ tions in South Africa has inhibited the evo­ lution of South African democracy” (1990 Membership Document #4). Intellectual freedom advocates argued that the poten­ tial harm resulting from free flow of infor­ mation to apartheid institutions must be tolerated to uphold a higher moral pur­ pose. However, one must wonder how this applies to the extreme, but real, case of nuclear bomb information that was trans­ ferred to the apartheid regime. Or put it this way, should a reference librarian give a skinhead a freely available manual for bomb making, or should such information be freely available on a skinhead Web site? One common way to deal with these problems is to adopt acceptable use poli­ cies. This report gives a number of ex­ amples, and here we see real differences between the U.K. and the U.S.; typical U.K. policies are much more restrictive than U.S. policies. For example, from the Suffolk County Council: “We will not censor access to information (any more than we do for books) but you may not look at information which may contra­ vene the law.” And, “If we know of sources of such material we will make them inaccessible so that they cannot be found through our terminals.” The report concludes with the follow­ ing nonconsecutive contradictory para­ graphs: Even so, there must be limits. Just as society will not tolerate the use of the Internet to promote child por­ nography, there must be some ex­ tremist content which is simply un­ acceptable. The promotion of ha­ tred, especially against vulnerable minorities, and incitement to vio­ lence have no place in a democratic society. Libraries are at the forefront of this dilemma: just where should the line be drawn? And, In the final analysis, librarians can ensure users are aware of the dan­ gers, but they cannot make ethical decisions for them. Attempting to control the material people access would deny them the right to see both sides of an argument, and the freedom to judge for themselves. An intervening paragraph advocates open access to the Internet, acceptable use policies, and lists of positive and use­ ful Web sites, but the authors do not draw any lines. Where our core values conflict, we may not be able to fine-tune such policies, but we must have tools to ap­ proach specific situations in a logical manner. Perhaps the debate on boycott­ ing the apartheid regime in South Africa has provided that tool. Whether in the U.K., Ghana, Thailand, or Brazil, we need to balance intellectual freedom with so­ cial responsibility. Each library associa­ tion, government body, library, and li­ brarian will have to figure out how to implement such balance depending on the local context.—Alfred Kagan, Univer- sity of Illinois-Urbana. Brosnan, Mark J. Technophobia: The Psy- chological Impact of Information Technol- ogy. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 220p. $75 cloth (ISBN 0-4151­ 3596-6); $22.99 paper (ISBN 0-4151­ 3597-4). LC 97-39321. This book is not the book I thought it would be. I had mistakenly assumed from the title that it would relate directly to the library profession, imparting sage advice on how to help both users and Book Reviews 171 staff deal with the increasingly technical nature of our profession as well as with our heightened profile in the much- touted age of information. Not so! Dis­ appointingly, this book focuses almost entirely on a fairly narrow medical in­ terpretation of the term technophobia, which is defined as having negative opinions of, or being anxious about, tech­ nology, particularly computers. Al­ though the author states that he is not trying to “create a pathology which can subsequently be attributed to particular demographic variables such as age or gender,” in fact, the focus on gender dif­ ferences in reacting to information tech­ nology cumulatively creates this effect. The author, Mark Brosnan, a lecturer at the University of Greenwich in England, has published widely in the area of cogni­ tive psychology. However, I was disap­ pointed to find little mention of the infor­ mation professions being affected by this syndrome—only a brief aside questioning whether “traditional skills in librarianship or accounting” are becoming dependent on computer literacy. Research into the plight of the technophobe (depicted here as “someone who perceives their fear of tech­ nology to be irrational”) is genuinely in­ teresting to all of us. Unfortunately, the style of the text is so opaque and turgid that the book is in fact a tough read. Some of my negative response to this book is due, I am sure, to the focus on gender differ­ ences. Much of the research referred to pre­ dates the most recent love affair with all things Web, and if the current trend to shopping on the Internet is taking off as the market hype indicates, many previ­ ously self-described technophobes may have already overcome their fears. The ability to shop on the Web will be a boon for other social phobias, such as agorapho­ bia and claustrophobia. The positive im­ pact of technology on social phobias is not discussed. The opacity of the surveys and research studies left me wondering why a researcher never directly asked the simple question, Why is it that many women do not seem to like playing around with com­ puters all day? Actually, the data on that topic are out there—and in a much more readable form. Sherry Turkle has written copi­ ously on the effect of technology on so­ ciety—and she is better able to grab your attention. This book does not reach the level of either Turkle’s The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1985) or her Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices within the Computer Culture (1990). Ironically, the most interesting chapter in Brosnan’s work, entitled “Technophobia and Cognitive Style/Spatial Ability,” re­ lies heavily on reiterating the research findings in The Second Self, but with no reference to Turkle’s latest monograph, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995). There is an interesting chapter on technophobia reduction, but this is really aimed at helping people who break out in a cold sweat just at the thought of turn­ ing on a PC. Brosnan does expand his discussion to include technology avoid­ ance as a valid strategy of resistance to the negative impact of an increasingly technological society. Unfortunately, ra­ tionalizing the resistance to technology is excluded from his definition of technophobia. There is naturally a Brit­ ish flavor to this text—not everybody will understand what a “boffy tech” is (boffin is a slang term for scientist) un­ less they are keeping up with Harry Potter’s adventures (in the original)—but this does not detract from the sense of the work. Brosnan’s aim is to combine research from several different areas—gender dif­ ferences, self-efficacy, cognitive style— into a unitary picture so as to develop greater insights into how various pro­ cesses affect computer use and how they interact with each other. His final con­ clusion is that the finding of higher inci­ dence of technophobia in females only represents “an apparent sex difference and is not biologically-biased.” This book is not a must-read by any means, but those librarians working in user education and library systems might find interesting some of the re­ 172 College & Research Libraries search articles cited. The index is quite thorough, and there is an extensive list of references. There are some surprising typos (if anyone has been to the “Navada dessert” recently, let me know how it tasted), which points perhaps to in­ creased use of spell check in the editing department rather than the intervention of human quality control.—Gillian M. McCombs, Southern Methodist University. Currie, Dawn H. Girl Talk: Adolescent Magazines and Their Readers. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Pr., 1999. 362p. $60 cloth (ISBN 0-8020-4415-8); $24.95 pa­ per (ISBN 0-8020-8217-3). LC 98­ 932362. In Girl Talk, Dawn Currie examines “the current tension between an analysis of magazines as ‘the purveyor of pernicious ideology to be condemned’ and their analysis as a venue of woman-centered pleasure to be embraced.” Arguing that scholars of women’s studies generally have neglected adolescents, she investi­ gates “the ways in which fashion and beauty magazines, as a popular reading medium for young women, present mes­ sages of feminism and femininity.” Currie focuses on the four leading Canadian teenage magazines (“teenzines”)—Teen, Seventeen, Young and Modern, and Sassy— as she “explore[s] the popular pleasures of consumption as a serious arena of femi­ nist analysis.” As the first of two overlapping stages of the study, content and thematic analy­ sis of the four magazines discloses that three themes dominate teenzine texts: beauty and fashion, heterosexual ro­ mance, and stardom. The other stage consists of individual interviews, supple­ mented by group discussions to test working hypotheses, with ninety-one girls aged thirteen to seventeen. Previ­ ous analyses of magazines have been conducted by scholars who are removed from intended readers in terms of age and education. What sets this research apart is that it emphasizes the views of teenzines’ intended audience. Contra­ dicting prior assumptions, Currie re- March 2000 veals, for example, that readers prefer text to glossy pictures. Other findings include the discovery that readers do not mimic the fashion and makeup styles they encounter in teenzines; rather, they apply the images and advice to their own efforts to “belong” among their class­ mates, thus constructing “a social Self that fits into school culture.” The author concludes, in part, that “given the ab­ sence of positive definitions of adoles­ cents and other signifiers of belonging, teenzines can take on more significance in readers’ lives than seems possible to many adults.” Currie, who chairs the Women’s Stud­ ies Programme and is associate profes­ sor of sociology at the University of Brit­ ish Columbia, grounds this complex study firmly in feminist ethnology. As such, it is expert research that approaches its topic from diverse perspectives, in­ cluding the textual organization of knowledge and the disjuncture between girls’ reading of teenzines and adults’ reading of women’s magazines. The lib­ eral inclusion of excerpts from interviews and discussions empowers teens to speak for themselves about their read­ ing habits and preferences. U.S. readers should note that the book’s author and publisher, and the teens being studied, are Canadian; American teens may have different opinions and preferences. Also, British conventions of punctuation (re­ versed roles of single and double quota­ tion marks) and spelling (e.g., “centre”) are used throughout. The fact that Currie apparently as­ sumes that her readers share her view­ point (e.g., “How can we, as feminists, take responsibility for reformulating our­ selves through new meanings of gender …”) may deter those who expect a less partisan interpretation. No history of the book (or the teenzine) will be found here; it is identified as an area for further re­ search. The sociological aspects of the narrative constitute demanding reading, but Girl Talk will be worth the effort for librarians, publishers, and parents who wish to understand the interests and