reviews.indd


Book Reviews 187 

analyzing data, and reporting results. 
Authors of subsequent chapters trace 
the implementation of these processes 
in a variety of curricula and institutions. 
Each chapter is focused on a particular 
strategy, implemented in a particular 
course or curriculum, at a single institu-
tion. For example, one chapter is devoted 
to an overview of the assessment of in-
formation literacy (IL) in an introductory 
education class at Spokane Falls Com-
munity College, whereas another focuses 
on assessment of IL in a history class at 
California State University at Northridge. 
The first of these projects utilized a Web 
page checklist, whereas the latter used a 
questionnaire to obtain information from 
students. These examples are valuable 
because they demonstrate that there is a 
chance to do assessment in nearly every 
curriculum and working within almost 
any administrative structure. 

Each chapter starts with a descrip-
tion of the institution, followed by a list 
of project participants, and provides a 
description of the project and its results, 
challenges, and conclusions. Examples 
of assessment tools are included at the 
end of each chapter. Sample assessment 
strategies include rubrics, questionnaires, 
source-rating exercises, Web evaluation 
forms, and analyses of research papers. 

Although many of the strategies uti-
lized to work with diff erent academic 
constituencies are innovative, the research 
methodologies are not groundbreak-
ing. The goal is to show that with some 
fundamental assessment skills and a ru-
dimentary knowledge of statistics, even 
folks who do not think of themselves as 
experts in assessment or research design 
can generate meaningful information for 
their organization. Most academic librar-
ians should find at least one example in 
this book that will cause them to say, “I 
could do that at my institution!” It is in 
this way that this book will have its great-

est impact.—John P. Renaud, University of 
Miami. 

Levinson, Nan. Outspoken: Free Speech 
Stories. Berkeley: Univ. of California 
Pr., 2003. 359p. alk. paper, $29.95 (ISBN 
0520223705). LC 2003-3000597. 

The jacket blurbs by Howard Zinn, Da-
vid Cole, Candida Royalle, and James O. 
Freedman extol this collection of twenty 
profiles and cases as variously “heart-
warming,” “inspiring,” “imaginative,” 
“compelling,” and “relevant.” They are. 
And the UC Press itself declares that “in 
an engaging, anecdotal style, Levinson ex-
plores the balance between First Amend-
ment and other rights, such as equality, 
privacy, and security; the relationship 
among behavior, speech, and images; the 
tangle of suppression, marketing, and 
politics; and the role of dissent in our 
society.” That’s an accurate description. 

Levinson, a Boston journalist, Tufts 
University lecturer, and free-speech 
advocate, never waivers in her commit-
ment to First Amendment values but also 
doesn’t avoid complexity and nuance. As 
she admits, “I began this book as an … 
absolutist and finish it as something less 
comfortable.” There are stories about a 
variety of people, from government of-
ficials, schoolteachers, and occupational 
health researchers to firefi ghters, teenage 
Webmasters, and black conscientious 
objectors, who wrote, spoke, read, drew, 
filmed, performed, or thought some-
thing that mightily disturbed someone 
else. So much so that the off ended par-
ties—among them, police, bureaucrats, 
and pressure groups—sought to silence 
the perpetrators, the boat-rockers and dis-
sidents, by such means as jail, expulsion, 
firing, defamation, and de-funding, not 
to mention outright censorship such as 
removing a mural, denying distribution 
to a documentary film, and banning gay-
positive literature from a high school. 



188 College & Research Libraries 

Levinson demonstrates, in great detail, 
that free speech does not come cheap. And 
sometimes, as in the horrific case of Mike 
Diana’s conviction and spirit-muzzling 
punishment for publishing an “obscene” 
comic-zine, it doesn’t come at all. She 
further illustrates that First Amendment 
heroes, although often principled and 
resolute, are more likely to experience 
stress and pain than exhilaration and 
fulfillment. In the aggregate, these tales 
may surely inspire appreciation for out-
spokenness and how crucial it is within 
a democratic society, but it also may 
represent a caution about the frequently 
dire consequences—job loss, vilification, 
heavy legal expenses, physical danger, 
and even prison—that behaving outside 
the box can entail. Thus, her tome could 
function equally as a clarion call to coura-
geous dissent—or a warning to shut up. 

Two unintended ironies emerge. In 
chronicling the ordeal of author Margaret 
Randall to regain her U.S. citizenship, 
which the INS tried to thwart based large-
ly on Randall’s political beliefs, Levinson 
reports that the once-expatriate writer 
lived for a while in Cuba, where she com-
piled an oral history of women there. 
“Even if it were possible, homogeneity 
of thought, though passingly seductive, 
is hardly desirable,” observes Levinson 
with respect to America and its speech-
bridling McCarran-Walter Act, which was 
invoked against Randall. However, there’s 
no comment concerning Randall’s appar-
ent fondness for the Castro regime and the 
explicit enshrinement of “homogeneity,” 
not diversity, in the Cuban Constitution. 
Second, although the ALA enjoys at least 
one favorable mention, there’s no recogni-
tion that ALA itself nowhere, in its policies 
and standards, firmly and unmistakably 
affirms the right of library staff to freely 
express their views on professional and 
policy issues in the workplace. (Librarians 
seem to fiercely support free speech for 

March 2005

nearly everyone and everything—except 
themselves.) 

A directory of all cited organizations, 
as well as free-speech groups and Web 
sites, would have been useful. And the 
work notably lacks graphics, for instance, 
showing a page or cover from Diana’s 
Boiled Angel, Richard Taylor’s antiauthori-
tarian graffiti, and the speculum-wielding 
Annie Sprinkle in performance. Indeed, 
including a few such photos and repro-
ductions in a university press volume 
would itself be a powerful affi  rmation of 
untrammeled expression. 

Robert Hauptman has bewailed the 
increasing absence of bibliographies in 
academic and scholarly tomes (Chronicle 
of Higher Education, Feb. 12, 1999) and I’ve 
bemoaned the frequent lack of indexes 
(Unabashed Librarian no. 124, 2002). Well, 
this book comes equipped with both. 
Nonetheless, the bibliography would 
have been enhanced by adding Jeff 
Schmidt’s Disciplined Minds: A Critical 
Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-
battering System That Shapes Their Lives 
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), which 
examines repression at work and how to 
resist it. And the index completely omits 
dozens of obvious names and topics 
(e.g., antiporn feminists, culture wars, 
masturbation, flock workers’ lung, Dirty 
Secrets, 60 Minutes, satanism, swearing, 
insubordination, Elvis Presley, anarchism, 
Progressive, Gerald Damiano, documen-
tary film censorship, U.S. Public Health 
Service, Church rock radioactive waste 
spill, United Nuclear Co., Billy Graham, 
Ma Rainey, vibrators, Langston Hughes, 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion), as well as 
underciting others (e.g., Bill Clinton, Walt 
Whitman, democracy, moral panics). 

The Library of Congress’s Cataloging-
in-Publication entry contains no contents 
note and therefore fails miserably to con-
vey the book’s broad scope and thematic 
richness. 



A hoped-for sequel will perhaps profile 
the experience of Marine Staff Sergeant 
Jimmy Massey, transferred from Iraq to 
the U.S. for psychiatric evaluation aft er he 
questioned the indiscriminate killing of 
Iraqi civilians. 

To conclude, these are some choice 
Levinson quotes: 
 “Censorship aims to stop discus-

sion and disagreement by punishing 
those who have the nerve to answer back 
to authority or fashion.” 
 “Censorship has two main thrusts: 

efforts to keep people from saying things 
deemed dangerous or disturbing, and ef-
forts to keep information secret.” 
 “People seldom thank you for expos-

ing their shortcomings, and punishment 
for breaking rank is often harsh; those who 
blow the whistle are routinely ostracized, 
silenced, and stripped of power.” 
 “It is easier to laud dissidents 

somewhere else, harder to champion 
those who challenge home truths, but 
protection of unpopular beliefs is what 
the First Amendment is all about.” 
 “We can defeat ideas only if we know 

about them, and the more we know, the 
bett er prepared we are to address the cir-
cumstances that make them appealing.” 
 “Arbitrarily applied rules are a 

method of control and a popular one in 
a democracy where it is preferable for 
people to police themselves.” 
 “Ironically, as our tolerance of va-

riety in sexual conduct increases, so does 
our punishment of sexual expression.” 

Index to advertisers 
Annual Reviews 94 
Archival Products 148 
Choice 97 
East View Information Services 183 
EBSCO cover 4 
Idea Group Publishing 93 
Iimage Retrieval cover 2 
Libraries Unlimited cover 3 

Book Reviews 189 

 “Art may not change us, but it 
can show us a way to change our mind. 
It allows us to muck about in the un-
imaginable, no small gift, and to do 
that requires license in all senses of the 
word—permission, liberation, boldness, 
immoderation, unruliness, any of which 
can be alarming.” 
 “For fundamentalists, dissenting 

words and ideas are not just dangerous 
but Satan’s playthings.” 
 “It’s easier to ban books than to 

ensure that everyone knows how to read 
them, or to arrest parents for photograph-
ing naked kids than to stop domestic 
brutality.” 
 “Thoughtful adults regularly equate 

distastefulness of expression with danger 
and warn of contagion, as if adolescent 
attitudes were a communicable disease.” 
 “Research institutions worry that 

if they get a reputation as unfriendly to 
industrial research, corporations will take 
their projects—and money—elsewhere.” 

Honesty, decency, candor, fairness are … 
familiar refrains in this book—along with 
the sickening realization that they will not 
necessarily be honored.— Sanford Berman, 
ALA Honorary Member, Edina, Minnesota. 

Knowledge Organization and Classifi-
cation in International Information 
Retrieval. Ed. Nancy J. Williamson 
and Clare Beghtol. Binghamton, N.Y.: 
Haworth, 2003. 244p. alk. paper, paper 
$22.46 (ISBN 0789023555); cloth $37.46 
(ISBN 0789023547). LC 2003-27498. 

This book is a collection of fourteen 
articles simultaneously copublished as 
Cataloging & Classifi cation Quarterly, vol. 
37, no. 1/2 (2003). These articles address 
various issues related to the linking of 
the world to information resources via 
the Internet, multinational intranets, and 
domain portals and gateways. 

Editors Nancy J. Williamson and Clare 
Beghtol, two prominent authors in the