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94 College & Research Libraries 

Maxwell, Nancy Kalikow. Sacred Stacks: 
The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Li-
brarianship. Chicago: American Library 
Association, 2006. 156 p. $32 ($28.80 
for ALA members) (ISBN 0838909175). 
LC 2006-573. 

Nancy Kalikow Maxwell has made a 
giant stride toward documenting what 
my mentor Edward G. Holley has often 
referred to as the “missionary impulse” 
of librarians. Drawing on her perspec-
tive formed by her Jewish roots and 
her master’s degrees in library science 
(University of Missouri at Columbia) and 
Catholic theology (the first conferred on a 
Jewish recipient by Barry University), she 
addresses librarianship as a calling. In the 
preface and throughout the book, she “ar-
gues that libraries have survived, and will 
continue to thrive in the future, because 
they fulfill eternal needs of people. Like 
clergy and members of religious orders, 
librarians hold a sacred profession, albeit 
one performed in a secular setting.” 

Maxwell, currently an administrator 
at Miami Dade College North Campus 
Library, brings thirty years of experience 
in public and academic libraries as well 
as extensive reading and study to bear 
in this historical, sociological, theologi-
cal, and philosophical discussion of the 
importance of libraries and librarians in 
American society. Chapter One: “Libraries 
as Sacred, Secular Institutions,” compares 
library usage to prayer. Chapter Two: 
“Librarians Perform Sacred Functions,” 
describes how “belief in the necessity of 
good works is evident in librarians’ mis-
sion to service” and how the library is a 
growing organism that “can be seen as 
an expression of the immanence of the 
divine.” 

Chapter Three: “Librarians and Librar-
ies Organize Chaos,” praises libraries for 
maintaining at least a “generalized order” 
enabling library users to “locate the infor-
mation they are seeking or stumble upon 
that which they need but did not know 
existed.” Chapter Four: “Librarians and 
Libraries Bestow Immortality,” summa-
rizes that the written word is “one of the 

January 2007 

best methods to provide life everlasting.” 
Chapter Five: “Librarians and Libraries 
Uplift Individuals and Society,” portrays 
libraries as key players in social justice 
movements “by providing not just knowl-
edge to users but the inspiration to act on 
what they learn.” Chapter Six: “Libraries 
Provide Sacred, Secular Space,” addresses 
the paradoxical roles of libraries, where 
users come to the library as a place to be 
publicly in “the presence of others who 
have come there to read by themselves” as 
well as privately “to be alone with others 
who want to be alone.” 

Chapter Seven: “Librarians and Li-
braries Promote Community,” promotes 
libraries as the “third place” (aft er home 
and work) for people to have access to 
regular, voluntary, informal gatherings. 
Chapter Eight: “Librarians and Libraries 
Transmit Culture to Future Generations,” 
describes how libraries seek out, catalog, 
and preserve cultural information for 
future generations to discover. The con-
cluding Chapter Nine: “Implications of 
Libraries as Sacred, Secular Institutions,” 
exhorts librarians to speak out for librar-
ies, demand spiritual, sacred space for 
library functions, remember the spiritual-
ity of books, demand space for books, de-
mand libraries serve as communal space, 
balance libraries’ public and private 
functions, control chaos, trumpet their 
ability to uplift individuals and society, 
and remember that they transmit culture 
and immortality. Maxwell also promotes 
the spirituality of libraries through fund-
raising and librarian recruitment. 

Maxwell shares more than just her own 
perceptions by documenting thoroughly 
in notes and bibliography her familiarity 
with major works in the history, sociology, 
and philosophy of learning and libraries. 
This slim compact volume will inspire, 
perhaps even provoke, anyone interested 
in the spiritual dimension of libraries and 
librarianship from library school students 
and general lovers of libraries to seasoned 
curmudgeons who think they have heard 
it all.—Plummer Alston “Al” Jones, Jr., East 
Carolina University.