reviews.indd 556 College & Research Libraries Western Europe, Kong’s description of the “second-channel” bookstores is fas- cinating. The old government bookstore system strictly controlled publication; profits went to the State, and not to au- thors, and the main editorial thrust of government-sponsored publication was socialist education. Second-channel stores (so called because they supplement the “main channel” of state-sponsored pub- lishing) are technically illegal in China and carry unoffi cially published books. Kong points out that second-channel pub- lishing has outgrown its image of seedy street bookstalls and private bookstores (though these still exist) and now feed a large, educated readers’ market. Given the size of China’s population, one should not be astonished at some of the sales figures that Kong tosses out, but this reader was astounded: 40,000 copies of translations of Proust sold within three years; 150,000 copies of Joyce’s Ulysses (in two compet- ing translations); 600,000 copies of The Bridges of Madison County. Chinese-lan- guage titles are even more popular; novels about the lives of young urban Chinese and “privacy literature” (autobiographi- cal fictions that focus on women’s private lives, especially their sexual lives) have found huge audiences. An example of this latt er genre, Shanghai Babe, by Wei Hui, sold 110,000 copies in half a year. Kong seems uncertain of what to make of this phenomenon: she acknowledges that sec- ond-channel publishing has unleashed a wave of creativity among Chinese authors and improved production standards, but she is a bit put out that so many publish- ers cater to readers’ “baser instincts.” One has the sense that the author has a Romantic view of the writer as someone called to ennoble the reader’s life; Kong does not seem to have fallen prey to the rather cynical Western view that writing and publishing is just another industry. It is difficult to imagine a U.S. population so thirsty for books that publishers would dare to advertise Harry Potter books on- screen in movie houses and then sell them in the lobby after the show. Yet, such is the November 2005 case in China, where, at least according to Kong’s account, books still seem to be an important part of the mass media. Kong’s book also deals with the con- tinuing problem of piracy in China, the challenges faced by literary journals that are no longer supported by the govern- ment, the growth of online bookstores, and the increasing availability of the media to ordinary people. Although not an essential purchase for most libraries, it is useful for its discussion of how mod- ernization has affected the book-buying public in China and certainly fills a gap in what has, until now, been a heavily Western approach to the study of books and reading.—Cecile M. Jagodzinski, Indi- ana University. Montgomery, Jack, and Eleanor I. Cook. Conflict Management for Libraries: Strate- gies for a Positive, Productive Workplace. Chicago: ALA, 2005. 207p. $42 (ISBN: 083890890X). LC 2004-30722. You might be surprised to hear that work- ing in a library is like working in the post office, but that’s the case according to Jack G. Montgomery and Eleanor I. Cook in Conflict Management for Libraries. They have several reasons for advancing this claim: (1) the work is repetitive and detail oriented, (2) layers of bureaucracy dis- tance employees at many levels from deci- sion making leading to profound feelings of helplessness, (3) library job skills are often not transferable to the nonlibrary business world, and (4) the “jobs for life” syndrome (as in all civil service or civil service–type environments) changes how managers deal with, and attempt to solve, serious HR matters. The logical conclu- sion that one might draw from this—that library staff might “go postal”—is one of the reasons for the existence of a study of workplace conflict aimed specifically at the library market. This book is based on a survey distrib- uted during the summer of 2000 to fifteen library electronic discussion lists. Over 500 individuals made responses, 455 of which were complete enough to be used in the writing of this book. The authors ex- plain that they were not interested in bean counting; instead, they identified a num- ber of themes that appeared frequently in the responses and from these they drafted seventeen “conflict scenarios” intended to be used as case studies. The intention was to convey information about the nature of conflict and the paths to resolution while never losing sight of the personal nature of these stories. Each scenario begins with a descrip- tion of the type of library in which the conflict occurred and the area/department within that library. The story itself then follows, after which two “confl ict experts” (consultants who work outside the library framework, but who have experience working with libraries) weigh in with their assessments. Finally, the authors round out the story by providing their comments on what went wrong and how the problem might be prevented. I must admit I was a bit skeptical about the whole notion of scenarios until I read the first one and discovered that it was squarely within the realm of my own experience in the workplace: the case of the internal candidate whom most em- ployees (including the candidate) believes will be the logical person to fill a vacancy; but then the administration fills that va- cancy by hiring an outsider. The internal candidate is angry and feels betrayed; the external candidate walks into a job not knowing there is immediate resistance from staff as well as from the rejected Index to advertisers Annual Reviews 516 Archival Products 495 Choice 485 EBSCO cover 4 Element K 526 Elsevier Science Direct cover 2 Idea Group Publishing 481 Iimage Retrieval 487 IEE Publishing cover 3 Libraries Unlimited 482 Book Reviews 557 internal candidate, and administration does nothing to help either party. Many of the scenarios that followed looked equally familiar: the staff person with private problems, the micro-manag- er, the office romance, the “dead wood.” I suppose there is some comfort in knowing that one is not alone in the library world in terms of working with these types of problems. Whether a few pages on how to solve them is useful, except to the most socially and managerially inept amongst our ranks, is another question. This book reminds me a little of the things my grade-school teachers used to say to the class again and again: “Grow up,” “Act your age,” “Stop fighting,” “Say you’re sorry,” “Quit picking on him or her,” “Show some courage.” Yes, the world is more complex as an adult, but the directives for employees and administra- tors are consistent: to practice some cour- tesy, emotional intelligence, and courage in confronting and sorting out problems. Can a book of this sort help inculcate such common sense? I think it’s a start. The voices of my grade-school teachers echo throughout the pages, but in a much more sophisticated way. Perhaps this book’s true value lies in reassuring us that we are not the first to encounter these types of problems and that the hardest thing to do in our efforts to resolve them may also be the simplest.—Nancy McCormack, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Thelwall, Mike. Link Analysis: An Infor- mation Science Approach. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier Academic, 2004. 269p. $69.95 (ISBN 0120885530). Given the number of erudite individuals who use and contribute to the Web, it was just a matter of time before someone coined the phrase “I link, therefore I am” to describe the Web’s core characteris- tic—the ability to hyperlink ideas, texts, Web pages, or anything else that can be posted to a server. This Cartesian concept is central to the Web, as Web architect Tim Berners-Lee describes in Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny