194 College & Research Libraries March 2011

Singapore. Chapter 14 describes Murray 
State University Libraries’ implementation 
of the Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) 
in which librarians choose the Web sites 
that are included in the index. Section III.3 
contains four chapters on new reference 
service models and marketing collections. 
Part III concludes with Section III.4, which 
focuses on staff training models, including 
a co-mentoring program at Baruch Col-
lege’s Newman Library.

The editors mention in their Intro-
duction that the reference renaissance 
“can be seen in the return to core values 
of service excellence in libraries and to 
the rising surge of innovative reference 
initiatives…” Based on the Reference 
Renaissance conference, the papers look 
at the way new information technologies 
have blended with traditional reference 
services in efforts to discover the “human 
process of questioning, contextualizing, 
and learning.” While the work serves as 
a good look at reference activities in 2008, 
in 2010 it misses the mark in the editors’ 
aim to “reveal an exciting and unfolding 
reference landscape.”—Nicole Mitchell, 
University of Alabama at Birmingham.

G.G. Chowdhury. Introduction to Modern 
Information Retrieval. 3rd ed. London: 
Facet, 2010. 508p. alk. paper, $90 (ISBN 
9781555707156). LC2010-013746.

Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval 
by G.G. Chowdhury is designed for new-
comers to the library profession who seek 
a broad overview of information retrieval 
(IR). In this third edition textbook, the 
majority of the content about concepts 
that drive IR technology remains the same 
as the previous edition with the addition 
of a few new concepts and technologies. 

Because of the broad nature of IR, most 
of the chapters only address the basics of 
IR and do not delve into detail. However, 
there are some large topics that are sur-
prisingly absent in this text, such as the 
Resource Description and Access (RDA) 
cataloging standards which have been 
in development since 2005 to update the 
AACR2 standards. Social network tools 

like social tagging and reviews are also 
not covered—to be fair, Facebook was 
briefly mentioned. 

The average chapter is structured 
with an introduction at the beginning 
that consists of one or two paragraphs. 
A nice feature for the introduction is the 
last sentence, which clearly summarizes 
what readers can expect to find. Within 
the chapter, there is a logical progression 
of related topics. Many topics include 
bullet point lists that highlight the main 
points. The bullets may bother some 
readers because they are used so much, 
but this reviewer found it handy in most 
cases to quickly get to the meat of the 
topic. Chapters typically end with one to 
two brief paragraph “Discussions,” which 
summarize the main aspects, followed 
by a decent reference list that averages 
between twenty and forty sources. There 
is a modest index at the end of the book. 

Adequate graphs, figures, and images 
are appropriately included throughout 
most chapters to enhance the dialog 
within the book. One complaint about 
this edition is the quality of the screen-
shot images; the screenshot quality is far 
better in the second edition. Many of the 
screenshots are so blurry that small and 
even moderate text sizes are unreadable, 
such as figure 12.3 NCBI Entrez taxonomy 
home page. A few more additional illustra-
tions would also enrich some of the more 
text-heavy chapters like the “Hypertext 
and Markup Language” chapter. 

Although the chapters are not grouped 
in this manner, the first three chapters 
cover the basic concepts of an IR system, 
types of database systems, and main bib-
liographic formats. Chapters four through 
eight cover the important process of cata-
loging and analysis of individual items 
prior to retrieval, including metadata, 
classification schemes, subject analysis, 
indexing and organization schemes, vo-
cabulary control, and abstracting. 

Chapters nine through twenty-two 
focus on the main types of IR systems: 
search and retrieval, user-centered mod-
els and interfaces, evaluation of IR 



Book Reviews 195

systems, and IR system types (systems 
for CD-ROM, multimedia, markup 
languages, Internet, natural language 
processing, citation analysis, and digital 
libraries). The final chapter discusses 
trends in information retrieval in regard 
to issues from previous chapters. 

There are a few oddities throughout the 
book. Curiously, there is an entire chapter 
devoted to retrieving information from 
CD-ROMs & online sources, but there 
is no discussion of more contemporary 
physical devices such as DVDs, Blu-ray, 
flash-drives, or cloud servers. There is 
also no discussion of the economic value 
of IR systems like the decreasing cost of 
memory. Chapter nine includes semitech-
nical mathematical functions that are likely 
to be difficult for students to grasp (for 
instance, the vector processing model). The 
Discussion section of Chapter 12 includes 
a number of similarly worded summary 
points, which gave the section a very repeti-
tive feel. Chapter 14 is entirely devoted to 
early studies on evaluating IR systems. This 
entire section, while providing interesting 
historical information, is really out of place 
from the rest of the book because it does 
not use contemporary examples. The final 
chapter, “Trends in Information Retrieval,” 
is disappointing, for it does not mention 
some of the current or cutting-edge IR tools 
like social tagging as one might expect. 

Overall, this book does a decent job of 
introducing general concepts of informa-
tion retrieval without delving into over-
whelming detail. In doing so, Chowdhury 
provides a good understanding of where 
much of our current systems have come 
from. Used with current supplemental 
readings, this book would be a good 
resource for a basic information retrieval 
course that focuses on traditional and, to 
a lesser extent, contemporary retrieval 
systems. The author has written numerous 
works related to IR systems—many are 
cited in this book—that demonstrate his 
knowledge of IR systems. For a contempo-
rary alternative that focuses on the same 
topics, but does not go into as much depth 
or breadth as Chowdhury’s book, consider 

Heting Chu’s book, Information Representa-
tion and Retrieval in the Digital Age.—John 
Repplinger, Willamette University.

Critical Library Instruction: Theories 
and Methods. Eds. Maria T. Accardi, 
Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier. 
Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 
2010. 341p. acid-free paper, $35 (ISBN 
9781936117017). LC2009-039408. 

Written by librarian-practitioners and li-
brarian-scholars, Critical Library Instruction 
examines critical pedagogy in the scope 
of library instruction. Critical pedagogy, 
as explained in this anthology, is a branch 
of educational research and practice that 
highlights the influence of power relation-
ships in the educational process and tends 
to focus on the social, cultural, political, 
economic, and cognitive influences on 
instruction and learning. The relationship 
between critical pedagogy and library in-
struction is more precisely designated as 
critical library instruction and described as 
“the ideas that background critical practice 
in the classroom—from Freire’s models of 
liberatory teaching to Kapitzke’s criticisms 
of standards models to Elmborg’s blending 
of literacy theory and library practice.” 
These writers, as well as Henry Giroux 
and Troy Swanson, are frequently cited 
throughout the book.

The book is divided into five sections, 
each consisting of four or more chapters. 
The first section contains five chapters 
that offer a conceptual toolkit for critical 
library instructors seeking new ways to 
reinterpret and reframe their own library 
instruction. Several topics discussed in 
this section include the role of historical 
archives, nature of the information cycle, 
and impact of problem-based learning on 
critical consciousness. Section two presents 
a classroom toolkit that blends theoretical 
models with classroom strategies and les-
son plans. These chapters mention some 
strategies for library instruction such as 
problem-based learning, use of workshops, 
and integrating feminist pedagogy as part 
of a research presentation. The third section 
focuses on teaching in context by highlight-