Book Reviews 597

In 1930, more difficult directions were 
given:

Since it is essential that each foreign-
born person be credited to the country 
in which his birthplace is now located, 
special attention must be given to the 
six countries which lost a part of their 
territory in the readjustments following 
the World War. These six countries are 
as follows: Austria, which lost territory 
to Czechoslovakia, Italy, Yugoslavia, 
Poland, and Rumania; Hungary, which 
lost territory to Austria, Czechoslova-
kia, Italy, Poland, Romania, and Yugo-
slavia; Bulgaria, which lost territory 
to Greece and Yugoslavia; Germany, 
which lost territory to Belgium, Czecho-
slovakia, Danzig, Denmark, France, 
Lithuania, and Poland; Russia, which 
lost territory to Estonia, Finland, Lat-
via, Lithuania, Poland, and Turkey….

It goes on, but you will have to read 
the book to see the rest. I can really sym-
pathize with the census taker who tries to 
understand and follow these instructions 
but can barely understand the residents 
who have very thick ethnic accents.

Simpson then turns to two chapters 
primarily aimed at librarians but also of 
value to other genealogists. The first is 
called the Reference Interview but could 
have been called Research Philosophies 
and Strategies. The other chapter is called 
Professional Toolkit. It is a combination 
of professional growth opportunities for 

genealogy librarians and annotated list of 
approximately two dozen titles that could 
form the core of a genealogical reference 
collection.

The single significant shortcoming of 
this book results from the author’s deci-
sion not to include a discussion of DNA. 
His reasoning was that “As a librarian, I 
do not assist researchers with DNA proj-
ects because this kind of research occurs 
outside the library, but it is important 
for librarians to help researchers to learn 
the basics of DNA research.” Therefore, 
the author included one book in his 
annotated bibliography but no further 
discussion of this important new geneal-
ogy tool. Excluding a basic discussion of 
DNA on this basis is dangerously close 
to suggesting that a basic text should ex-
clude a detailed discussion of census data 
because it is collected outside the library.

All in all this is a well-written book by 
a very knowledgeable genealogy librar-
ian. The pace of the book keeps the reader 
moving. The information is relevant and 
up-to-date—particularly the discussions 
of online resources. It, minus a discus-
sion of DNA, is a very solid introduction 
to the basics of genealogy research and 
genealogy librarianship. In addition, it is 
an easy read. A couple of times my wife, 
who is neither a librarian nor a serious 
genealogist, picked up the book and read 
several pages before I was able to wrestle 
it back.—Dave Dowell, Emeritus College, 
Cuesta College.

J. Greg Matthews. Literary Research and 
Irish Literature: Strategies and Sourc-
es. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 
2009. 213p. alk. paper, $40 (ISBN 
9780810863668). LC2008-029230.

As its title makes clear, the fifth volume in 
Scarecrow’s “Literary Research: Strategies 
and Sources” series provides an overview 
of resources and methods for researching 
Irish authors and their works. The author 
is a cataloging librarian at Washington 
State University Libraries with some 
expertise in the subject (he holds a mas-
ter’s degree in English literature from the 

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598 College & Research Libraries November 2009

University of Idaho and regularly reviews 
Irish and Welsh literary works for Library 
Journal and other publications) and he is 
able to provide vivid, “real world” ex-
amples of research questions that could be 
answered using the sources and strategies 
he recommends. He writes clearly and 
offers detailed narratives that guide the 
reader step by step through particular 
types of searches.

Each chapter focuses on a different 
type of source useful for researchers of 
Irish literature: library catalogs; print 
and electronic bibliographies, indexes 
and annual reviews; scholarly journals; 
periodicals, newspapers, and reviews; 
microform and digital collections; manu-
scripts and archives; and Web resources. 
Each chapter begins with a brief overview 
of the resource—important definitions 
(in the chapter on scholarly journals, 
for example, he differentiates between 
articles, review essays, notes, and book 
reviews) and types of information the 
reader will find in a typical source in that 
category. The chapters are then divided 
into sections either by type of source or by 
research task. The chapter on “Scholarly 
Journals,” for example, is subdivided by 
type of source—“Irish Literature Jour-
nals,” “Author-specific Journals,” and 
“General Literature Journals”—while 
the chapter on “Periodicals, Newspapers 
and Reviews” is subdivided by research 
task—“Identifying Periodicals and News-
papers” and “Finding Articles and Re-
views.” Within each section, the author 
provides descriptions of the sources, 
comparing sources to each other or com-
paring electronic and print versions of the 
same source in terms of scope, authority, 
usability, and the like.

The author’s choice of sources is, for 
the most part, a logical mix of general and 
specialized works. His choices, however, 
occasionally seem idiosyncratic, such as 
in the section on “Irish Literature Author 
Bibliographies,” in which he lists a total of 
six bibliographies, four of which concern 
George Bernard Shaw. (Seamus Heaney 
and Lady Gregory round out the list.) 

With so many Irish authors from which 
to choose, a little more variety would have 
been appropriate. Matthews’ descriptions 
of his sources are concise but detailed and 
offer many useful tips for their use; for 
example, the chapter on “Scholarly Jour-
nals” recommends checking the dates of 
the first and last citations in a list of MLA 
International Bibliography search results 
to determine the extent of a journal’s cov-
erage in that database (86).

The final chapter, “Researching a 
Thorny Problem,” uses the task of “identi-
fying authors who published in a specific 
periodical”—in this case, the Irish literary 
journal The Bell (Dublin, 1940–1945)—to 
illustrate the impasses and frustrations 
that an average researcher might encoun-
ter. Matthews’ case study offers a good 
example of a skilled researcher’s patience 
and resourcefulness in the face of a dif-
ficult question and makes a plug for the 
usefulness of a good reference librarian. 
(Reference librarians should appreciate 
that the author makes frequent mention 
of them, pausing at least once per chapter 
to indicate points in the research process 
where a librarian’s expertise would be es-
pecially helpful.) The end matter includes 
a brief bibliography, an adequate index, 
and an appendix, “Resources in Related 
Disciplines,” with annotated entries for 
print and electronic sources in Art, His-
tory, Music, Philosophy, Religion, and 
the Sciences, for researchers wanting to 
explore materials outside the standard 
Literature sources.

The book’s one minor shortcoming is 
that its intended audience is somewhat 
unclear, alternating between beginning 
researchers, such as graduate students or 
undergraduates in upper-level literature 
courses, who need an explanation of the 
basics of literary research, and advanced 
researchers who, though well-versed in 
literary research, are perhaps new to the 
field of Irish literature. A case in point 
is the first chapter, “Basics of Online 
Searching,” which provides a thorough 
introduction to electronic research—
brainstorming keywords, understanding 



Book Reviews 599

the structure of MARC records, creating 
search strategies, using Boolean, proxim-
ity, and truncation operators, complete 
with Venn diagrams—that would be at 
home in a library science textbook. This 
is undeniably valuable information, but it 
is likely to be skipped over by researchers 
and librarians who have even a pass-
ing familiarity with online catalogs or 
databases.

Altogether, the book offers a useful 
guide for researchers of Irish literature at 
all levels, as well as for the librarians who 
assist them. Librarians may also find the 
volume helpful for developing a collec-
tion of print and electronic resources for 
Irish literary research.—Timothy Hackman, 
University of Maryland.

Information Technology in Librarian-
ship: New Critical Approaches. Eds. 
Gloria J. Leckie and John E. Bushman. 
Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlim-
ited, 2009. 297p. alk. paper, $50 (ISBN 
9781591586296). LC2008-030424.

Too often, arguments on technology 
begin with an already assumed benefit 
or detriment from the adoption of new 
technologies. Without the rationale that 
would expose issues related to the argu-
mentative context as well as faulty rea-
soning, the arguments cannot further the 
needed critical discussion. By providing 
the theoretical foundations for productive 
critical discussions and arguments on 
technology in connection to librarianship, 
this volume serves an essential comple-
ment to current arguments on technology. 
Indeed, the volume’s stated purpose is 
to intensify and extend librarianship’s 
analysis of technology. 

Given the ever-evolving impact of 
technology on librarianship, this volume 
presents information vital for all working 
in librarianship and in related fields. As 
a second edition of Critical Approaches to 
Information Technology in Librarianship: 
Foundations and Applications (1993) edited 
by Bushman, one of the core strengths 
of this volume is the historical context 
it provides for current issues in relation 

to technology. The volume succeeds in 
presenting the needed context without 
delving into unnecessary details that 
could otherwise have detracted from the 
volume’s purpose.

Texts on technology run the danger of 
being overly focused without sufficient 
context, and thus appealing only to those 
already familiar with a certain level of 
technology. Because this volume focuses 
on the issues and implications connected 
to technology, it will be accessible and 
useful for readers who are already famil-
iar with critical discussions of technology 
as well as readers who are new to the 
conversation. 

Bushman and Leckie’s introduction 
opens the volume by giving a sense of 
the landscape for the critical discussions 
underway with the pertinent histories and 
contexts. They then explain six types of 
critical approaches present in each of the 
chapters in varying degrees, classifying 
these as critiques of and related to: capital 
control of technology; rationalization, 
control, and monitoring; the Information 
Revolution as ideology; feminist critiques 
of technology; technological utopianism; 
technology, politics, and the public sphere. 
The introduction offers a brief overview 
for each of these approaches, covering key 
points in the arguments along with their 
practical implications and significance. 
After laying the groundwork for the rel-
evant conversations related to these core 
lines of inquiry, the volume itself is then 
divided into two sections: “Foundations” 
and “Applications.” 

The “Foundations” section includes 
five chapters that span a range of topics 
and themes, including: instrumentaliza-
tion theory, which explains two ways to 
study technology, at the level of practical 
application and at the level of designed 
intent; surveillance and privacy issues; 
what it means for librarians to be infor-
mation age workers in terms of labor 
and cycles of control and resistance for 
Internet freedom; technology, literacy, and 
the educational system with an analysis of 
the real issues at stake when technology