reviews Book Reviews 381 ate cost of $29.95, Sorting Things Out is a bargain.—James Williams, University of Il- linois at Urbana. Challenges Facing Higher Education at the Millennium. Ed. Werner Z. Hirsch and Luc E. Weber. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Pr. (American Council on Higher Educa- tion/Oryx Press Series on Higher Edu­ cation), 1999. 199p. $29.95, alk. paper (ISBN 1-57356-293-9). LC 99-28204. This volume is a compilation of papers presented at a colloquium held at Glion, Switzerland, in May 1998. It is interest­ ing to note that not all the views ex­ pressed at the conference are represented here. In the preface, the editors observe that two points of view were in evidence: David Saxon, president emeritus of the University of California extolled the vir­ tues of stability and caution in plotting the future of the university, whereas “most” others took a more activist stance. The book comprises the latter only. Many familiar buzzwords anchor the discussions contained in the book’s sev­ enteen chapters: Contributors express concern about lifelong learning, produc­ ing educated citizens, and the effects of new technologies and globalization on institutions of higher learning. They worry about the deepening gap between research and teaching, consider the value of distance education, and look at the role of the student as consumer. Part 1, “Mis­ sions and Values,” includes a survey chapter followed by discussions of the university’s role in “meeting the chal­ lenges of the new millennium” and uni­ versities in “the new Europe.” Contribu­ tors to this section include volume editor Luc E. Weber, a professor of public eco­ nomics at the University of Geneva; David P. Gardner, a foundation president; and Paolo Blasi, rector of the University of Florence. In Part 2, “The Effect of the Changing Environment on Higher Education,” Uni­ versity of Michigan president emeritus James J. Duderstadt looks at the pluses and minuses of current trends affecting university life and offers two widely dif­ ferent possible scenarios for the future. Stanley O. Ikenberry, former president of the University of Illinois and current president of the American Council on Education, writes about “The University and the Information Age” in this section, and it is astonishing to note that he does not mention the word library once in his discussion of new computing and tele­ communication technologies. Indeed, libraries appear only three times in this volume: once in an offhand sentence sug­ gesting that libraries should share their resources, a second time in a discussion of the California Digital Library, and a third time in University of Geneva Pro­ fessor Dennis Tsichritzis’ chapter, “Re­ search and Education: New Roles, New Instrument.” Professor Tsichritzis ob­ serves that: First, book libraries will gradually be replaced by all-encompassing digital libraries available on the net­ works. Libraries will be there, but they will play a limited role as rare document collections. Most people will not need to consult the real thing. Second, students will have ac­ cess to too much information. One wonders just who Professor Tsichritzis imagines will help students make sense of all that information. Part 2 concludes with a chapter by busi­ nessman Harold M. Williams on the eco­ nomics of higher education in the United States and what other “developed coun­ tries” can learn from it. The affiliations of the authors mentioned so far is represen­ tative of the entire book—with one excep­ tion, they are men with either academic or corporate backgrounds. Without wanting to belabor the absence of library conscious­ ness in this volume (well, maybe I do), it seems appropriate to note the existence of a very fine, similar, earlier book, The Mod- ern University: Its Present Status and Future Prospects (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Wm. Rand Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, 1994). Intro­ duced by library educator Edward G. Holley, it also is a compilation of papers 382 College & Research Libraries presented at a convocation and includes distinguished contributors such as William G. Bowen and Ernest L. Boyer. Part 3 of Challenges Facing Higher Edu- cation at the Millennium is the largest sec­ tion of the book and includes chapters such as “Financing Universities through Nontraditional Revenue Sources,” “Net­ works and Strategic Alliances within and between Universities and with the Private Sector,” “Governance,” and “The Re­ search University Potential as an Area’s Growth and Prosperity Stimulant.” “Higher Learning as a Joint Venture be­ tween State and Industry: The Example of the International University in Ger­ many” is by the book’s only female con­ tributor, Heide Ziegler, president of the private International University in Bruchsal, Germany. All of these and the other discussions in this book are articu­ late and well informed, if not particularly earth-shaking. I must say, though, that I was not sure what to make of the anti- Spock (Benjamin) contributor who sug­ gested that “The recent dramatic success of the film Titanic, particularly with the young generation, is, in my opinion, due to the authentic values that it represents.” The three chapters comprising Part 4, “The University of the Future,” include discussions of higher education in the twenty-first century from a European point of view, a brief discussion of “fu­ ture challenges” facing American univer­ sities (really a reiteration of earlier com­ ments), and a similarly reiterative de­ scription of the characteristics of “the new university” by former Cornell University president Frank H. Rhodes. “The Glion Declaration,” a statement summarizing the collective views of colloquium mem­ bers appears as an appendix. Includes an index.—Ellen D. Gilbert, Rutgers Univer- sity. Collins, Boyd, et al. Building a Scholarly Communications Center: Modeling the Rutgers Experience. Chicago: ALA (Frontiers of Access to Library Mate­ rials, no. 5), 1999. 161p. $48, alk. paper (ISBN 0-8389-0765-2). LC 99-29859. July 2000 Building a Scholarly Communications Cen- ter is a timely example of how academic libraries are reinventing themselves in the context of the rapidly changing academic world. The volume’s authors, librarians at Rutgers University, set out to share their experiences in planning and devel­ oping Rutgers’s Scholarly Communica­ tions Center (SCC) as a “gateway to new models of scholarly communication and the new roles of libraries.” The book’s primary goal is to explain how academic libraries can “reinvent themselves to meet the demands of an increasingly information-based—and in­ formation-hungry—society”; it achieves this goal. It is clearly written, even the detailed information on the implementa­ tion of the various stages of this ambitious project. The authors are frank in their dis­ cussions about the challenges and diffi­ culties they faced, especially concerning staffing and construction issues. As many other academic librarians have likewise experienced, funds were available for building walls and purchasing comput­ ers, but none was allocated for the staff­ ing changes that resulted from the estab­ lishment of the SCC; the SCC Manage­ ment Team squeezed the necessary per­ sonnel from existing library staff and fac­ ulty. Other pertinent discussions include how to deal with the challenges of teach­ ing in an electronic environment and with the management of staff training con­ cerns. The SCC, completed in December 1996, is an addition to the Alexander Li­ brary at Rutgers University and in­ cludes three distinct parts—Teleconfer­ ence Lecture Hall, Information Han­ dling Laboratory, and Humanities and Social Sciences Data Center. Each of these units is discussed in detail in sepa­ rate chapters, including the rationale, planning, staffing, and special needs of each unit. The Teleconference Lecture Hall, the “cornerstone” of the SCC, is a large lecture theater with satellite and ISDN videoconferencing capabilities. The Information Handling Laboratory is a series of small classrooms designed