reviews.indd


282 College & Research Libraries May 2006 

federated manipulation of digital objects 
must be of the highest priority for all 
scholars and librarians. 

That said, the ill-coordinated reality 
of the present state of AmLit on the Web 
does seem an appropriate match for the 
intensely individualistic nature of the 
humanities as practiced today. Orga-
nized research has not been a defining 
characteristic of humanistic scholarship, 
and probably for good reason. Attempts 
to rationalize the Web—the dream of 
many—would thus not come without 
costs and losses. No one involved in 
humanities computing on college and 
university campuses today is unaware of, 
or unaffected by, the increasingly central-
ized nature of academic IT. The needs for 
standardization, control, scalability, and 
cost-effectiveness are real, but so, too, is 
the creative freedom they tend to drive 
out. One of the reasons why humanities 
computing may not be so robust as it 
could be is that campus IT initiatives are 
almost always top-down and generic and 
thus antithetical to traditional humanistic 
practices. After all, if the new fi rst com-
mandment on campus is “Thou shall use 
Blackboard.” What are the incentives for 
innovation? Keep your pencils sharp and 
at the ready. I raise the issues of hierarchy 
and creativity not out of any false nostal-
gia for the “good old ‘90s” but, rather, 
out of a perceived concern that in build-
ing a more stable, durable, and usable 
Web future, we keep in view the need to 
sustain the vibrancy and creativity of the 
humanities at the same time. We need 
not be careful of what we wish for, if we 
wish for the right things.—Michael Ryan, 
University of Pennsylvania. 

O’Meara, KerryAnn, and R. Eugene Rice. 
Faculty Priorities Reconsidered: Reward-
ing Multiple Forms of Scholarship. San 
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005. 340p. 
alk. paper, $36 (ISBN: 0787979201). 
LC 2005-6483. 

Some fifteen years ago, a very small book 
made a very big noise. In Scholarship 
Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate 

(1990), Ernest L. Boyer articulated the 
revolutionary idea that traditional re-
search (i.e., original research aimed at 
the discovery of new information and 
grounded in recognized methods of quan-
titative or qualitative inquiry), which he 
called the “scholarship of discovery,” was 
only one of four dimensions of scholar-
ship in which faculty members might 
fruitfully engage during their careers. 
Although the scholarship of discovery 
was the model most often rewarded in 
the annual review, tenure, and promotion 
process, he argued, there were ways in 
which other professional responsibilities 
might be framed as valuable types of 
scholarship for which faculty also might 
be recognized. Joining the scholarship of 
discovery in Boyer’s model were what 
have since been discussed in the literature 
as the scholarship of teaching, the scholar-
ship of engagement (originally referred 
to as the scholarship of application), and 
the scholarship of integration. Although 
studies of these “multiple forms of schol-
arship” were sponsored throughout the 
past decade by organizations such as the 
American Association for Higher Educa-
tion (AAHE) and the Carnegie Founda-
tion for the Advancement of Teaching, 
and although a number of monographs 
have focused on how to evaluate distinct 
dimensions of scholarly activity (e.g., 
Driscoll and Lynton’s Making Outreach 
Visible: A Guide to Documenting Professional 
Service and Outreach [1999]), the literature 
was still lacking an overview of the impact 
of reform initiatives, inspired by what is 
often referred to as “the Boyer Report,” 
on national discourses on evaluation of 
faculty performance and on the guide-
lines for faculty evaluation developed by 
individual campuses. Bringing together 
leaders of national reform programs with 
the leaders of reform from individual 
campuses representing a wide range of 
institutional types, the current volume 
aims to fill that gap. 

In part one of this collection, Rice, 
who served as a leader of AAHE efforts 
to promote new forms of scholarship and 



faculty review, presents an overview of 
the historical factors that infl uenced the 
proposed new model for scholarship and 
of the role that AAHE played through-
out the 1990s in sponsoring inquiry into 
multiple forms of scholarship. He joins 
recognized leaders in the field such as 
Lee Shulman and Amy Driscoll in pro-
viding an introduction to each of the four 
dimensions of scholarship and the place 
that each currently holds in discussions of 
faculty work. It will come as no surprise 
that some of the alternative models for 
scholarly work defined by Boyer (e.g., 
the scholarship of teaching) have made 
greater inroads into campus culture than 
others (e.g., the scholarship of integra-
tion), and the final chapters in part one 
of this collection focus on issues related 
to implementing Boyer’s ideas through 
both national programs (e.g., Preparing 
Future Faculty) and local efforts. 

Implementation at the local level 
takes center stage in part two of this col-
lection, forming the heart of the work. 
Drawing on substantive case studies 
from nine different campuses, including 
liberal arts colleges (Franklin College), 
land-grant institutions (Kansas State 
University), urban institutions (Portland 
State University), large research univer-
sities (Arizona State University), and 
nontraditional institutions (University 
of Phoenix), part two identifi es many 
factors that can influence the success of 
local efforts to redefine scholarly activity 
and to look anew at how those activities 
should be evaluated as part of the annual 
review, tenure, and promotion process. 
Although the approach taken to reform 
was different at each institution studied, 
each case study shares a commitment to 
articulating the cultural factors that in-
fluenced reform efforts at the local level, 
identifying the key players on campus 
and reflecting critically on the degree 
to which these efforts (some now over 
a decade in the making) have actually 
changed the way that scholarly efforts 
are viewed by members of the faculty 
and the administration. 

Book Reviews 283 

Part three of this collection returns the 
spotlight to the national stage by present-
ing the results of an AAHE-sponsored 
survey of chief academic offi  cers (CAOs) 
on campuses across the country. More 
than 700 CAOs completed the AAHE 
survey in late 2001 and early 2002, provid-
ing information about the formal policy 
changes made on their campuses during 
the previous decade for the purpose 
of recognizing the validity of multiple 
forms of scholarship. O’Meara, who 
conducted the survey in her role as an 
AAHE research associate, combines the 
information gathered through the case 
studies with the information gathered 
through the survey to identify the most 
common barriers to change, as well as to 
identify best practices for those urging the 
recognition of multiple forms of scholar-
ship on their campuses. The fact that a 
program encouraging collaboration be-
tween members of the classroom faculty 
and academic librarians, especially noted 
by O’Meara (pp. 273–74), is a hopeful 
sign of the significance of these efforts 
in keeping the library at the heart of the 
academic enterprise. 

Although the current collection will 
likely not serve as the seminal study of 
the impact of the Boyer report on faculty 
culture, Rice and O’Meara have done 
a great service by bringing together an 
enormous amount of information about 
a broadly defined approach to academic 
reform that has taken on as many shapes 
as there are campuses that have engaged 
the ideas presented in the Boyer report. 
For those entirely unfamiliar with the 
literature of the scholarships of teaching, 
engagement, and integration, this collec-
tion will provide a useful introduction. 
For those who have followed one or 
more threads in this discussion over the 
years, this collection will provide useful 
information about how their own area(s) 
of interest factor into discussions at both 
the local and national levels. Finally, as 
academic librarians continue discussions 
about the allocation of professional time, 
peer review of teaching, and the role 



284 College & Research Libraries 

of the engaged academic library in the 
information-literate community, we can 
find important lessons in this collection 
that can help us to bring our own efforts 
to reform evaluation of professional 
performance into a broader campus con-
text.—Scott Walter, University of Kansas. 

Grassian, Esther S., and Joan R. Kaplow-
itz. Learning to Lead and Manage Infor-
mation Literacy Instruction. New York: 
Neal-Schuman (Information Literacy 
Sourcebooks), 2005. 322p. alk. paper 
(+ CD-ROM), $65 (ISBN 1555705154). 
LC 2005-9356. 

Most books about information literacy 
instruction (ILI) address valuable topics 
such as teaching methods, scheduling, 
and IL standards. Grassian and Kaplow-
itz’s focus on the overall management of 
ILI and the qualities of good ILI leaders, 
therefore, is a welcome addition to the 
literature. Both authors have experience 
in managing and leading ILI in academic 
libraries and have added to the research 
base on the topic by writing articles 
and jointly authoring Information Lit-
eracy Instruction: Theory and Practice (Neal 
Schuman, 2001). 

Although this book is aimed at librar-
ians who participate in instruction, its 
main audience includes those who wish 
to focus on changing ILI in positive ways. 
ILI librarians are in the unique and chal-
lenging position of staying up-to-date on 
databases, IL trends, library policies, and 
evolving issues in information science, 
while also developing instruction for the 
library’s users, most of whom are unfa-
miliar with the nuances of fi nding aids 
and the nature of information. 

Learning to Lead and Manage Information 
Literacy Instruction progresses logically 
from a discussion of leadership and man-
agement, in general, to sections on doing 
ILI research, securing relevant grants, and 
determining the role of technology within 
the instruction librarian’s duties. Grass-
ian and Kaplowitz distinguish between 
managers and leaders, hence the title of 
the book. Managers, by nature of their 

May 2006 

duties, are in a position to control how 
and when things are accomplished in 
libraries, whereas anyone may be a leader 
(“grassroots leaders”) regardless of their 
position. Leaders direct the what and 
why in libraries: “Each time an individual 
takes a stand, expresses an opinion, or 
suggests a new way of doing things, that 
person is taking a leadership role.” 

Much of the first half of the book 
covers ways of communicating and col-
laborating. This is another area central 
to the authors’ ideas on eff ective ILI pro-
grams. Even the subsequent discussions 
on building teams, working through 
change, cooperating within and outside 
the library, fostering growth, developing 
grants, and marketing and promotion 
are grounded in communication and 
collaboration. 

This book has three main strengths: (1) 
inclusion of many ideas for promotion 
and marketing (and the authors do not 
shy away from answering the tough ques-
tion of handling the workload associated 
with successful promotion), (2) discussion 
of the realities of the technological side 
of the ILI librarian’s job, and (3) recom-
mendations for additional reading on ILI 
and management/leadership topics. One 
weakness is the authors’ failure to discuss 
their ideas and successes with integrating 
standards, such as ACRL’s Information 
Literacy Competency Standards for 
Higher Education, into ILI programs. The 
book regretfully concludes immediately 
after the technology chapter; no wrap-up 
or cohesive conclusion synthesizes the 
ideas presented in the chapters. A full 
bibliography and index follow the last 
chapter. 

The CD-ROM is a helpful feature of the 
book package. The sample syllabus stands 
out as the most interesting section, with 
many sound ideas on working IL into 
the curriculum of an English course. Two 
sample proposals, one for a grant, serve as 
good, concrete examples of the text such 
documents may contain. A sample letter 
to faculty discussing the potential of ILI 
for their students is a nice surprise. There