reviews 486 College & Research Libraries September 2001 cess of moving two major history data­ bases, Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life, from CD-ROM to the Web. Perhaps the most valuable point raised by Speck is the importance of user input in the process. Academic libraries and librarians that become Web publish­ ers would do well to follow a similar user-centered strategy. In “Road to Papermoon,” Brian-John Riggs describes how he set up his personal online bookstore, Papermoon Books, with the aid of ABE (Advanced Book Exchange), a Canadian online company that serves as an intermediary between sellers and pur­ chasers of out-of-print titles. In “21st North Main, Inc.,” Jeff Strandberg, a representa­ tive of the corporation by the same name, documents his company’s business plan. Using ABE’s database as a resource, “21st North Main” focuses specifically on the library market, acting as Web-based inter­ mediary connecting libraries searching for out-of-print books with independent book­ sellers who carry the title. Some readers might find that this chapter comes close to free advertising, however, the notion of using commercial companies as interme­ diaries might well be useful in certain non­ profit Web-publishing ventures. The next two chapters explore Web publishing from a user’s perspective. In “A View from the Other Side of the Refer­ ence Desk,” Anne T. Keenan makes an impassioned plea for Web publishers to consider the needs of the typical public library patron. She emphasizes the impor­ tance of making database interfaces as simple as possible, with an emphasis on keyword searching. In “What Price Sim­ plicity: A User-Centered Mediation,” Laura Spencer expresses similar concerns from the perspective of the academic li­ brary. Her plea to Web publishers to cre­ ate search interfaces that assist users in focusing their search is especially pow­ erful. The final chapters focus on two related issues, the importance of metadata and the use of standards in creating Web data­ bases. In “Data and Metadata: An Over­ view of Organizations in Searchable Full-Text Databases,” Aurora Ioanid and Vibiana Bowman persuasively argue that controlled vocabulary still has an impor­ tant role to play in searching full-text da­ tabases. The volume concludes with “XML: A Way Ahead for the Library Da­ tabase?” In this chapter, Richard Gartner discusses the importance of standards, and his argument for XML as perhaps the best standard for Web publishing might well become required reading for any librarian interested in creating Web-accessible da­ tabases. In conclusion, Julie M. Still and Infor­ mation Today are to be commended for the high editing and production stan­ dards exhibited by this useful volume. One should note, however, that the latest print resource cited in the any of the chap­ ters is dated 1999, suggesting a rather long gestation period for the collection. Also, some readers may be uncomfortable with the personal, almost pleading nature of the writing in some chapters. But these are minor issues that do not seriously detract from the usefulness of this vol­ ume.—Wade Kotter, Weber State University. Dilevko, Juris. Unobtrusive Evaluation of Reference Service and Individual Respon- sibility: The Canadian Experience. Westport, Conn.: Ablex (Contemporary Studies in Information Management, Poli- cies, and Services), 2000. 220p. $69.50 cloth (ISBN 1567505066), $24.95 paper (1567505074). LC 99-058739. Unobtrusive testing of reference service, wherein reference librarians are asked to answer questions by a researcher’s “un­ dercover” employees or proxies, is a tech­ nique that has been hotly contested in the library profession, especially since the controversial studies of Charles McClure and Peter Hernon in the 1980s. Those studies reported accuracy rates of barely more than 50 percent, which led to con­ siderable debate about the efficacy and fairness of the methodology. Now, Juris Dilevko, a faculty member in Information Studies at the University of Toronto, has utilized unobtrusive testing to devastat­ ing effect in an examination of the inabil­ Book Reviews 487 ity—and in some cases, unwillingness— of some Canadian librarians to answer certain factual questions. One of the objections to unobtrusive testing has been that in most libraries fac­ tual questions make up a relatively small percentage of all reference inquiries, and therefore poor performance in answering such questions, though lamentable, can­ not be taken as an adequate assessment of overall reference service. Although ac­ knowledging that this argument has some validity, Dilevko points out that it does not excuse inadequate performance of a service that librarians claim to pro­ vide. Further, librarians cannot afford to take comfort in the higher scores that tend to be found in patron satisfaction surveys because these rarely document the kind of enthusiastic endorsement of library services that indicate a desire for a con­ tinuing relationship with the services. Dilevko goes on to marshal several argu­ ments and research studies to justify his contention that accuracy is an essential component of a broad-based service as­ sessment program. The empirical research reported in this monograph consists of two studies. The first attempted to investigate how well staff in Canadian federal depository li­ braries answer government documents reference questions and whether they are using Internet-accessible and Web-based sources to do so. In a nutshell, Dilevko found that the questions posed by his proxies, either by phone or in person, were answered correctly in about one- quarter to one-third of the cases. If par­ tially correct answers or referrals that led to partially correct answers are included, almost half of the questions were still answered incorrectly. Dilevko’s analysis of the referrals recommended by the li­ brarians who cannot themselves answer the questions shows that only about 40 percent of the referrals led—or would have led—to the correct answer. As dis­ tressing as these findings may be, it is equally unsettling to read the assessments of Dilevko’s proxies, mostly library and information science students, of the tested librarians’ service attitudes. In a chapter entitled “What the Proxies Said about the Service They Received,” we are presented with a rather lengthy litany of “negative closure strategies” that were used by the librarians who were unable, uninterested, or both in helping the proxies obtain an­ swers to the questions. It is a breath of fresh air to also read of the many librar­ ians who strove conscientiously to be of assistance, even when they ultimately failed to find the correct answer. Dilevko concludes his report of the government documents study with an analysis of each question’s level of difficulty, and he dem­ onstrates how most of the failures were by librarians who made no attempt to use Internet-accessible and Web-based sources. Use of such sources by someone familiar with them yielded correct an­ swers quickly and efficiently. The second part of Dilevko’s research delves further into one of the findings of the government documents study: prox­ ies were significantly more likely to ob­ tain a correct answer to the questions if they asked them in person rather than over the telephone. Dilevko’s proxies tele­ phoned reference desk personnel at the central branch of the twenty most popu­ lous metropolitan areas in Canada to ask selected questions from the current news. The success rate was 19.5 percent. As in the government documents study, nega­ tive closure strategies, including avoid­ ance and rudeness, were more common than one would have anticipated. Dilevko’s final chapter is a careful re­ view of his research findings and a con­ sideration of the implications for the li­ brary profession. He urges several reforms in library management practices, pointing out that continuing professional develop­ ment is too little emphasized and sup­ ported in public and academic libraries. Substantial investment in various means for improving librarians’ skills is essential, Dilevko argues, and is not always compli­ cated or expensive. He repeatedly calls for requiring reference librarians to read newspapers as part of their preparation for the kind of questions that arise from cur­ 488 College & Research Libraries September 2001 rent affairs and that were used in Dilevko’s unobtrusive tests. Although a number of the author’s other suggestions for improv­ ing reference service, such as periodic re­ certification of librarians, are strongly re­ sisted by many, if not most, in the profes­ sion, they are all offered with well-rea­ soned justifications that draw on the writ­ ings of S. R. Ranganathan, Jacques Barzun, Jerry Campbell, and many others. It is a thought-provoking exegesis. The author does an admirable job of describing his methodology, and even readers who are unfamiliar with strati­ fied random sampling or bell curve dis­ tributions will appreciate how sound and thorough the research design is. The over­ all tone of his writing is far less negative than one might expect given the nature of the research and the results, but Dilevko is not seeking to tarnish the profession’s reputation. Rather, he wishes to point out where we are not living up to reasonable expectations. Budget cuts, overworked library personnel, and other constraints are cited sympathetically, but Dilevko is persuasive in his contention that none of these factors will be accept­ able to a populace with new information service options that hold the promise of delivering superior accuracy. This book is not pleasant reading for anyone who takes pride in the library profession’s dedication to service, but if we quibble about details and ignore its well-documented message, we do so at our peril.—W. Bede Mitchell, Georgia South- ern University. Libraries and the Book Trade: The Forma- tion of Collections from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century. Eds. Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Pr. (Publishing Pathways Series), 2000. 192p. (ISBN 1-58456-034-7). LC 00-058865. This anthology consists of eight papers delivered December 4–5, 1999, at the 21st Annual Conference on the History of the Book Trade, organized by Birkbeck Col­ lege, University of London. The focus of the essays is the changing relationship of libraries with the book trade from the six­ teenth to the twentieth century. Elisabeth S. Leedham-Green, formerly deputy keeper of the Cambridge Univer­ sity Archives, in her essay, “Booksellers and Libraries in Sixteenth-Century Cam­ bridge,” clearly documents that libraries had to rely on gifts and bequests for their accessions and that it was not until the seventeenth century that most college li­ braries set about selecting books for pur­ chase. She also points out the irony that sixteenth-century scholars would more likely find the most popular books they needed in booksellers’ shops than in the University Library. R. Julian Roberts, deputy librarian at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, in his essay, “The Latin Stock (1616-1627) and Its Li­ brary Contacts,” describes how the Bodleian during the seventeenth century purchased books using printed catalogs of the stock available at the Frankfurt book fairs and the help of agents in the so-called “Latin Trade,” who traveled widely in search of Latin titles for libraries. Keith A. Manley of the Institute of His­ torical Research, University of London, and editor of Library History, in his essay, “Booksellers, Peruke-Makers, and Rabbit-Merchants: The Growth of Circu­ lating Libraries in the Eighteenth Cen­ tury,” documents how these circulating libraries “helped to fill the gap between the requirements of the ordinary reader and those of the scholarly and professional community, by providing the public with the reading matter it wanted—usually fic­ tion—or, in some cases, with the books it was thought to need, such as sermons and works of self-improvement.” Simon Eliot’s essay bears the fanciful title “‘Mr. Greenhill, you cannot get rid of’: Copyright, Legal Deposit and the Sta­ tioners’ Company in the Nineteenth Cen­ tury.” Eliot, professor of publishing and printing history at the University of Read­ ing, examines the Stationers’ Company’s records kept by the Greenhills, George (1767–1850) and later his son Joseph (1803–1892), who served as warehouse