reviews.indd


266 College & Research Libraries 

provides samples of what some libraries 
have used to get the same idea across by 
means of an online form.

 With an extensive index, endnotes, 
and a bibliography at the end of each 
chapter, the reader is provided with 
bibliographical leads to research the 
topic further. Academic librarians have, 
as Janes notes, “an opportunity to pro-
vide direct, mediated services to people, 
breaking the boundaries of place and time 
that have constrained us (and our users) 
for millennia.” Academic libraries should 
be grateful to have such an enthusiastic, 
concise, well-organized, and well-written 
guide for the direction or implementation 
of digital reference services.—Elizabeth M. 
Williams, Appalachian State University. 

Knuth, Rebecca. Libricide: The Regime-
Sponsored Destruction of Books and 
Libraries in the Twentieth Century. 
Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003. 277p. 
alk. paper, $39.95 (ISBN 027598088X). 
LC 2002-44542. 

The appalling phenomena of genocide 
(destruction of peoples) and ethnocide 
(destruction of cultures, often part of a 
genocidal campaign) are well known. 
Although the local conditions and spe-
cific historical circumstances can be quite 
varied, there is a persistent underlying 
focused hatred, often mindless, routin-
ized, and administratively managed as 
if it were a problem in sanitation main-
tenance or road construction. When 
these impulses specifically turn to books, 
manuscripts, and other forms of infor-
mation and knowledge records, the apt, 
if less familiar, term libricide naturally 
suggests itself. 

For those not already familiar with at 
least the outlines of the story, it is starkly 
sobering, and the rich accounts of these 
case studies provide much to think about. 
Methodologically speaking, the evidence 
appears to come not directly from prima-

May 2004 

ry sources but, rather, from the author’s 
readings of secondary sources. This may 
account for the suspiciously close fi t be-
tween the theoretical discussion and the 
evidence of the cases. (For readers—like 
this reviewer—unfamiliar with whatever 
sources provide the foundations for the 
cases, a summary discussion would have 
been appropriate.) 

Chapters 2 and 3 provide first a con-
ceptual and historical overview (“The 
Evolution and Functions of Libraries”) 
and second a conceptual framework (“A 
Theoretical Framework for Libricide”), 
which contextualizes the five case studies 
presented in chapters 4 through 8 (Nazi 
Germany, Greater Serbia, Iraq’s 1990 
attack on Kuwait, the Chinese cultural 
revolution, and the Chinese attack on 
Tibet) while a final summary discussion, 
“The Collision of Ideas,” is presented in 
chapter 9. 

The subject matter and details pre-
sented in the case studies are both 
compelling on their own and skillfully 
presented in a narrative that is engaging 
and readable. But I can’t recommend 
the book unreservedly, particularly for 
classroom use, except for readers already 
quite familiar with the outlines of the 
social, political, and economic history 
that supply its larger context. Without 
this, one might be too easily misled by 
the author’s unexamined bias toward the 
more conservative versions of free-mar-
ket, Western-style liberalism. Somewhat 
paradoxically, her own views seem to 
partake of the ideological fervor she so 
rightly decries. For Professor Knuth, first 
there are the good guys: that’s the modern 
Western intellectual tradition, bent on 
nothing but the discovery of the truth, 
the accumulation of wisdom, and the tri-
umph of civilization. And then there are 
the very bad guys, such as Communists, 
Fascists, and extremist ideologues of 
various stripes. (See chapters 4 through 



8, where these are described in detail.) 
The author adds, gratuitously, that this 
Western tradition has, however, at times 
been treasonously attacked by some of 
its own wayward native off spring, such 
as Rousseau, Ibsen, Marx, Shelley, and 
Tolstoy, all of whom are dismissed for 
being too eager to exchange “objectivity 
and intellectual freedom” for the fanati-
cism of the true believer. 

 Given this wooden opposition be-
tween nonideological “democracy” and 
ideologically saturated “totalitarianism,” 
it isn’t surprising that Knuth fails to draw 
on the concept of ideology usefully. Li-
brarians in market societies are simply 
pitted against “political ideologues.” 
Similarly, in the theoretical discussions, 
modernity and modernization are de-
picted in one-sidedly positive terms only, 
with no sense of the poverty, inequality, 
alienation, cultural and psychic malaise, 
and environmental devastation they have 
also unfortunately brought along in their 
wake; and there is thus no inkling that 
democracy and dictatorship, as politi-
cal systems, have issued from much the 
same set of large-scale socioeconomic 
and political changes (e.g., Barrington 
Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship 
and Democracy. Boston, 1966). Obviously, 
one cannot speculate here on the origins 
of totalitarianism, except to point out that 
this book would have greatly benefited 
from considering the issue—for if it is 
true that “the … origins of mass killings 
… lie in responses to the social disintegra-

Index to advertisers 
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Emery-Pratt 215 
Idea Group 187 
Libraries Unlimited 193 
Library Technologies cover 3 
Scopus cover 4 
TechBooks 191 

Book Reviews 267 

tion brought on by way and/or upheaval 
from rapid urbanization, secularization, 
and economic depression,” it is also true 
that the same phenomena have occurred 
in industrialized market economies. And 
herein lies the real problem, I suspect, 
with the analysis, for there is no sense that 
market societies have their own highly 
developed ideologies.

 For the author of Libricide, only a 
totalitarian society can have an ideology, 
which she defi nes as: 

a political belief system that seeks 
the total reconstruction of society, 
differing from creeds and outlooks 
in its greater explicitness, system-
atization, comprehensiveness, and 
urgency… . In an ideology-based 
political climate, both individual 
and cultural behavior must con-
form to a comprehensive pattern 
of moral and cognitive beliefs. In 
the eyes of political extremists, for 
example, reading and research are 
political acts, their purpose to fur-
ther ideological goals, rather than 
inherently valuable activities that 
enrich the individual and advance 
the knowledge base of the human 
community. 

Ideology, extremism, and totalitarian-
ism—all tied into one lethal package. 

This approach is so one-sided—an 
obvious neoconservative incursion—that 
it cannot help but bias the choice of cases 
toward authoritarian and totalitarian so-
cieties. In Karl Mannheim’s terms, Knuth 
has fixed on the “particular” conception 
of ideology and stops short of the “total” 
conception of ideology, where all sym-
bolic systems are, in principle, subject 
to social and political analysis. (See Karl 
Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Intro-
duction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Lon-
don, 1936). When we make this jump from 
the more parochial to the more expanded 
concept, we get a much more powerful 



268 College & Research Libraries 

conceptual tool for analyzing phenomena, 
particularly those as emotionally charged 
as these; would that the author had made 
that step here. 

This is not entirely a theoretical ques-
tion, as a consideration of a diff erent set 
of cases could easily show, for liberal 
regimes have enthusiastically carried out 
genocide, ethnocide, and their own ver-
sions of libricide, but of course they have 
used different techniques, not considered 
in Professor Knuth’s account. Such a 
consideration would amply illustrate 
Mark Twain’s observation about the three 
inestimably precious virtues of American 
democracy: freedom of thought, freedom 
of speech, and the wisdom to exercise nei-
ther. Libricide is obviously an important 
phenomenon, which calls for an analysis 
acknowledging this reality.—Michael F. 
Winter, University of California, Davis. 

Musings, Meanderings, and Monsters, Too: 
Essays on Academic Librarianship. Ed. 
Martin H. Raish. Lanham, Md.: Scare-
crow Pr., 2003. 195p. alk. paper, $24.95 
(ISBN 0810847671). LC 2003-2085. 

This book is about change in academic 
librarianship. It is organized in nineteen 
chapters. Most of the chapters include 
a list of references or suggested further 
readings. Several of the authors’ names 
are not recognizable as frequent contribu-
tors to academic library literature. The 
new ideas and perspectives are refresh-
ing. Relevant quotations are used at the 
beginning of the chapters; the quotes 
used at the end of chapters are not always 
relevant to the respective chapter, but 
nonetheless they are enlightening. Those 
quoted range from Indiana Jones to Edna 
St. Vincent Millay.

 Various topics on change in academic 
librarianship/libraries are addressed in 
this easy-to-read volume. I, however, 
suggest that companion reading to this 
book include Paul Wasserman’s The 

May 2004 

New Librarianship: A Challenge for Change 
(New York, 1972) and Spencer Johnson’s 
Who Moved My Cheese? An A-mazing Way 
to Deal with Change in Your Work and in 
Your Life (New York, 1998). Wasserman’s 
landmark volume will set the theoreti-
cal and philosophical stage for change 
in librarianship. Notwithstanding the 
publication date of Wasserman’s work, it 
remains highly relevant to today’s chang-
ing landscape of librarianship. Johnson’s 
best-seller is a simple (but powerful) par-
able that reveals profound truths about 
change. Both these works complement 
Raish’s volume but, more important, they 
add a prerequisite understanding about 
the genesis and development of change 
and its aftereffects.

 Raish and the contributors to the book 
are to be commended for their inclusion 
of wit and a sense of humor. Without 
this slant, the reader could prematurely 
conclude that the seriousness about the 
“sky is falling on academic librarianship” 
is a bit too much. The book is loaded 
with negative twists. The use of the word 
monsters in the title and introduction 
could turn off some readers. The chapter 
titles “Slipping Sanctuaries” (chapter 2), 
“Reference Librarians As Wild Animals” 
(chapter 4), “Giving Away the Keys to 
the Kingdom” (chapter 14), and “Will 
Time Tame This Tyrant” (chapter 19) 
contain unfortunately negative connota-
tions. Chapter 6 (“Ketchup Has Always 
Been a Vegetable”) is an example of a 
nonspecific title. Some chapters (e.g., 
chapter 13, “From Custodian to Naviga-
tor: The Amazing Heroic Journey of the 
New Information Specialist”) are more 
straightforward. Regrettably, the book 
does not have an index; thus, the reader 
has to seek specific information by wad-
ing through the entire volume. 

When editor Raish contacted the 
potential contributors, he asked them to 
focus their respective essay on one generic