Book Reviews 607

teachers—lifelines, as it were—while 
explaining the need to adapt constantly 
since each learning situation is different 
and dynamic, dependent upon the spe-
cific student’s prior knowledge, level of 
engagement, and other factors often out-
side a teacher’s control. In foregrounding 
the importance of metacognition, Booth 
offers the foundations for maintaining 
a solid footing in the classroom while 
understanding how to assess the specific 
needs of each classroom to adapt a les-
son design on the fly.—Paul Lai, Saint 
Catherine University.

Information Literacy: Infiltrating the 
Agenda, Challenging Minds. Eds. 
Geoff Walton and Alison Pope. Ox-
ford, U.K.: Chandos Publishing, 
2011. Distributed in the U.S. by Neal-
Schuman Publishers. 322p., $90 (ISBN: 
9781843346104).

The articles in this 2011 anthology 
emerged from the Staffordshire Univer-
sity Information Literacy Community of 
Practice (SUILCoP), a group primarily 
active from 2006 to 2010 and representing 
more than 50 U.K. organizations, princi-
pally in postsecondary education. The 
collection is intended to provide informa-
tion about specific information literacy 
(IL) initiatives and related issues, as well 
as to form the foundation for a call to ac-
tion during a time of perceived economic 
peril for IL programs within U.K. higher 
education. Although the case studies and 
some of the discussions are specific to 
the U.K. context, there is a lot of fuel for 
information literacy practitioners in any 
21st-century library, and the call to action 
is relevant across cash-strapped nations.

The editors are both heavily involved 
with IL-curriculum integration at Staf-
fordshire. Alison Pope is Learning and 
Information Services Manager and 
cocreator of the award-winning Assign-
ment Survival Kit (ASK) tutorial (www.
staffs.ac.uk/ask/), and Geoff Walton is 
Academic Skills Tutor Librarian and 
Senior Researcher. The two previously 
coedited Information Literacy: Recognizing 

the Need (Chandos, 2006) and coauthored 
“Information and Media Literacies: 
Sharpening Our Vision in the Twenty 
First Century” for the collection Issues in 
Information and Media Literacy: Education, 
Practice and Pedagogy (Informing Science, 
2009). The twelve papers that form the 
main body of this book are contributed 
by individuals who research, teach, and 
program information literacy across the 
United Kingdom. 

The book is divided into three sec-
tions. Collaboration, Curriculum, and 
Courses features articles focused on 
IL-curriculum integration throughout 
the undergraduate career, workplace 
learning, and 21st-century pedagogical 
methods. The Development, Dialogue, 
and Design papers address IL integration 
across the curriculum, as well as practical 
approaches to development of reusable 
learning objects (designed for repurpos-
ing across institutions) and video and 
film materials. The final section, Obesity, 
Overload, and Opportunity seems both 
ambitious and forward-thinking, featur-
ing discussions of the political nature of 
IL instruction, the impact to IL of sweep-
ing changes to modes of communication 
and learning, and the use of assessment 
measures to identify specific areas of IL 
instruction in the United Kingdom that 
may merit revised or additional instruc-
tion. In reality, the articles share themes 
and foci across the sections. Since Pope 
and Walton, in their introduction, fail to 
clarify the distinctions between them, the 
alliterative section titles are somewhat 
distracting.

A number of the represented authors 
employ a global perspective. For example, 
Jillian R. Griffiths and Bob Glass report 
on their implementation at Manchester 
Metropolitan University of an informa-
tion literacy assessment test originally de-
veloped in the United States and based on 
ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency 
Standards for Higher Education (2000). 
Identifying areas for future intervention 
and considering the specific context of 
U.K. higher education, Griffiths and Glass 



608 College & Research Libraries November 2012

began working with other practitioners 
on development of a bank of assessment 
measures for a U.K. student population. 
The anthology is clearly intended for a 
U.K. audience, as evidenced in context-
specific terminology and in the institu-
tional constraints and opportunities de-
scribed. However, in the spirit of its own 
transnational discourse, international 
readers may find both inspiration and 
practical resources in its pages.

The case-study format for many of 
these reports ensures that readers are 
able to get a clear sense of the specific 
initiatives studied and conceptualize 
how certain elements might be adapted 
to new contexts. Librarians interested in 
21st-century teaching practices and their 
application within library instruction will 
glean a great deal from Chris Wakeman’s 
discussion of active learning pedagogies, 
a topic that arises elsewhere in the collec-
tion as well. Several of the authors discuss 
IL assessment efforts, providing detailed 
information for anyone considering such 
issues in their own institutions. Two great 
examples are Keith Puttick’s article about 
embedding IL requirements within a law 
school curriculum, and Katharine Reddy’s 
and Kirsty Baker’s framework for IL in-
tegration from first year through gradu-
ation, which features detailed rubrics. 
With a growing emphasis on assessment 
and accountability in many academic 
libraries, the glimpse of assessment-in-
action provided by these authors can be 
quite valuable. The use of figures, tables, 
and appendices in many of the articles 
helps concretize the studies further, and 

a general index assists with way finding. 
Stylistically, the articles run the gamut 
from Gareth Johnson’s very practical, 
nuts-and-bolts treatment of video and 
film production for IL instruction to An-
drew Whitworth’s fairly esoteric discus-
sion of IL and “noöpolitics,” a perspective 
produced, according to Whitworth, when 
“a resource-based analysis of politics, or 
‘geopolitics,’ [extends] into the sphere of 
information.”

A U.K. audience will find relevance 
here that eludes the rest of us, but there 
is value for everyone. Outlining specific 
challenges faced by teaching librarians 
during a time of radical change in U.K. 
higher education policy, Pope and Walton 
call for a shift toward new modes of teach-
ing and learning as a means to reinvigo-
rate the role of library instruction in the 
21st century and enhance its valuation. It 
is an evolution that aligns IL with some 
of the new priorities emerging from the 
broader realm of higher education world-
wide and a call to action that deserves 
attention. The connection between Pope’s 
and Walton’s impassioned plea and the 
twelve essays that follow is not always 
clear, but both are valid. Some of the 
articles in Information Literacy will likely 
prove merely tangential to the endeavors 
of any individual librarian working on an 
IL initiative, but as a body of knowledge 
they contribute much.—Linda Miles, Ye-
shiva University.

Philip F. Gura. The American Antiquar-
ian Society, 1812–2012: A Bicentennial 
History. Worcester, Mass.: American 
Antiquarian Society, 2012. 454p. alk. 
paper, $60 (ISBN 9781929545650). LC 
2011-27183.

Our Independent Research Libraries 
Association (IRLA) libraries comprise a 
unique and rich set of special collections 
and museums. They are also among 
our oldest extant cultural institutions. 
Some date from the Colonial era, others 
from the early years of the new republic: 
institutional embodiments of a learned 
patriotism. Celebrating its bicentenary 

Index to advertisers
American Inst. of Physics cover 2
American Psychological cover 3
Archival Products 518
CHOICE 542
Counting Opinions cover 4
Elsevier 612
Joblist 555
MIT Press Journals 517
Philosophy Documentation Ctr. 521