reviews Book Reviews 293 those taken elsewhere in the United States. Midwestern land-grant universi­ ties, for example, are seen as trying to be “all things to all people, incorporating not only the goals of a research university, but also the educational responsibilities and admissions standards of a junior college, including vocational training.” Likewise, postwar approaches to institutional coor­ dination such as the State University of New York system are seen as belated at­ tempts to enforce order from the top down on a “happy anarchy” of histori­ cally unrelated colleges and universities. Although there is an inevitable air of boosterism about this work, Douglass’s arguments concerning the unique ap­ proach to public higher education taken in California during the past century are persuasive. Also significant is the way in which the present work complements and extends earlier studies in the history of education. Douglass’s history of educational policy- making at the state level is valuable, and it extends familiar arguments about sup­ port for K–12 public education to the postsecondary level. Likewise, his analy­ sis of the influence of Progressive-era movements, both in political and educa­ tional reform, on the evolution of the Cali­ fornia Idea builds on earlier work focus­ ing on K–12 education (e.g., Tyack’s The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education, 1974). Douglass’s analy­ sis of the historical relationship among public investment in accessible higher education, individual socioeconomic mobility, and state and regional economic growth not only builds on earlier work, but also has important implications for contemporary debates on educational policy. One thing that I have always remem­ bered about the brief period of my child­ hood spent in southern California is that my mother never worried about how she would afford the higher education we both knew I would eventually obtain. Everyone went to college in California, my mother told me, and it was virtually free. My memory is undoubtedly colored by the fact that I was only ten years old at the time, but my mind turned back to those days more than once as I read Douglass’s richly researched history of higher education in California. As he writes in his Introduction, “Access to a public higher education … [was] an im­ portant facet in the lives of Californians. It profoundly shaped their aspirations and, ultimately, their views on what it meant to be Californian.” More than once, I have encountered the brilliant products of California state schools and wondered about the devel­ opment of its unusual system of higher education. This study answers a number of questions about how California has gotten to its present point in the provi­ sion of public higher education. Although many will undoubtedly question the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of the California state system as described by Douglass, its significance to programs in history of education, higher education, and public policy ensures its value for any academic library collection.—Scott Walter, Washington State University. The New Review of Libraries and Lifelong Learning. Ed. Peter Brophy. Cam­ bridge: Taylor Graham, 2000. v.1. Pub­ lished annually. U.S. subscription price $130. ISSN 1468-9944. Editor Peter Brophy states in his opening editorial for this first volume, “Lifelong learning is among the most important policy issues across the world at the start of the twenty-first century.” The advent of globalization, the rise of multinational corporations, and the rapid development of digital networks that span continents challenge higher education systems ev­ erywhere. The definition of student and teacher are being transformed. This new serial publication seeks to show how li­ brarians can contribute to these trends. At first glance, one might be skeptical of the need for this journal. Many of us are not experts on the topic, nor heavily engaged in the issues surrounding either “lifelong” learners or their kin, the “dis­ tant” learner. However, further examina­ 294 College & Research Libraries tion of this first volume leads to the con­ clusion that important work is being done in this area and that it is incumbent upon librarians to embrace and understand their role in making lifelong learners suc­ cessful. Theories of learning, as educators have understood them in the past, are undergoing dramatic shifts in interpreta­ tion. This is especially true for adult learn­ ers, the population addressed by this pub­ lication. As scholarly and other types of information become increasingly avail­ able through digital networks, the more independent learners can be. But do they find the most relevant sources for their needs? How would they know, and how are librarians able to measure this? What programmatic and technological aids can we contribute to the lifelong learner ’s success? How do traditional attitudes and policies impede or contribute to new paradigms? The premise that librarians can—and should—be an important part of future lifelong learning efforts under­ scores all the articles in this first volume, but with the assumption that librarians must “think out of the box” and approach their roles differently and creatively. The first article in the collection, by editor Brophy and Alan MacDougall, ex­ plores the premise that “lifelong learning offers an approach to social inclusiveness and to individuals’ personal fulfillment.” The authors proceed to explain why li­ braries can play an important role in pro­ moting this idea. They emphasize that Index to advertisers AIAA 211, 250 CHOICE 288 EBSCO cover 3 Faxon/Rowecom cover 4 Greenwood Publishing 208 ISI 238 Library Technologies 259 netLibrary cover 2, 207 OCLC 226 ScienceDirect 215 University of California Press 213 May 2001 there is no room for complacency if we are to be successful in providing relevant services. The second article, by Elizabeth Burge and Judith Snow, addresses issues sur­ rounding the distance education model. They discuss four factors: “technology adoption, learner demographics, con­ structive learning, and institutional pres­ sures.” The article’s title refers to “candles and corks” as devices that are no longer critical to the functions of modern every­ day life but are still considered useful in certain contexts and environments. Like candles and corks, librarians may add a certain “qualitative dimension” to the needs of learners, and thus we must find ways to assert the continuing benefits of our services. Phillippa Levy’s article discusses how new “information and communication technologies” (ICTs) provide alternative ways to delivering curriculums. She spe­ cifically describes a project called NetLinkS, which was developed at the University of Sheffield. Maurice Line’s contribution includes a description of what the ideal future library would look like to the independent learner. Articles by Mar­ garet Kendall, John Allred, and Veronica Adamson describe specific projects admin­ istered by U.K. public libraries, the U.K. Department for Education and Employ­ ment, and the University of the Highlands and Islands (Scotland), respectively. “Hy­ brid Librarians and Distance Learners: The Fact Controllers?” by Debbie Lock and Jen­ nifer Nordon, describes some of the very real practical considerations one must ad­ dress when attempting to embed distance learning services into a traditional library setting. An annotated bibliography at the end of the volume may be useful to those seek­ ing more information on these topics. Sec­ tions A and B of the bibliography deal, respectively, with international and na­ tional perspectives on lifelong learning policy. Section C is devoted to “Lifelong Learning and Libraries.” This new serial comes out of the United Kingdom at a time when the topic is of great Book Reviews 295 interest to educators worldwide. Thus, the audience is not limited to those in Western nations. The editorial board includes a num­ ber of “names” within the lifelong/distance learning community, although the member­ ship is drawn primarily from Common­ wealth countries. The writing is well ed­ ited and the articles relevant to the mission of the publication. I shared the volume with the distance learning library services coor­ dinator at our library and her impression was favorable; in fact, she was impressed, exclaiming that “these people really ‘get it.’” As with any new journal launch, it remains to be seen if it will succeed. The prolifera­ tion of journal literature guarantees that it is a risk; however, the topic is timely and reports of successful outreach to lifelong learners by librarians are certainly welcome and useful.—Eleanor Cook, Appalachian State University. Successes and Failures of Digital Libraries: 35th Annual Clinic on Library Applica­ tions of Data Processing, 1998. Eds. Su­ san Harum and Michael Twidale. Ur­ bana: Univ. of Illinois Graduate School of Library Information Science, 2000. 134p. $30 (ISBN 0-87845-107-2). One of the most important things we are learning about technological change to­ day is that it increases at a rate that many of us find is hard to match. Moore’s Law gives us eighteen months; other laws give us less. Another important thing we are learning is to discriminate between the kinds of information packets that need the full bibliographic and digital treatment and those that are more transitory—pack­ ets that have timeliness, but not necessar­ ily staying power. We also are learning how to take advantage of Web technol­ ogy to provide warp-speed access to in­ formation and events. These were some of the thoughts go­ ing through my head as I started to read these papers: timeliness, relevance, and future interest quotient. How does this publication measure up against these cri­ teria? These annual clinics, sponsored by the Graduate School of Library and Informa­ tion Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are organized around specific themes designed to ex­ pose librarians, information scientists, and others to new trends and approaches in information technology. The theme for the 35th clinic in 1998 was digital librar­ ies, the successes and failures thereof, al­ though perhaps a better and certainly more descriptive title for this work would have been “digital library test bed projects funded by the four-year NSF/ARPA/ NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI).” Indeed, a brief history of the DLI, phase 1, is the topic of the first paper contrib­ uted by Stephen Griffin, NSF program director. Are there lessons here for librarians struggling with the “if, why, and how to go digital” dilemma? Not really, because the technologies described have already both migrated and become more main­ stream. For the researcher? Perhaps. But it is clear to most educated participants in the digital arena that the remaining is­ sues are primarily nontechnical in nature. Cultural, social, and legal issues are the crucial stumbling blocks still to be over­ come. The laborious processes described in these papers call to mind the TULIP (The University Licensing Program) experi­ ment in the early 1990s, which held out so much promise for taking librarians to the cutting edge of electronic information delivery. Yet, by the time it took to fully conduct all those e-journal test bed projects, the world had moved on, the technology had changed, and Tim Berners-Lee had launched Mosaic from CERN. It is important that library re­ searchers participate in these kinds of projects, and yet it seems we cannot pro­ ceed quickly enough. One of Thomas Hickey’s conclusions in his paper describ­ ing OCLC’s early efforts with full text— that users were not interested in e-jour­ nals until they had become used to the Web as a technology—seems almost pre­ historic because so many of our users to­ day will not look at anything that is not available on the Web.