622 College & Research Libraries November 2013

copies from laboriously hand-produced 
tracings to mechanized routines. By the 
mid-century, it had become possible to 
marry the two, and photolithography 
began to make more or less faithful cop-
ies of old books accessible to a wider and 
wider public. While fastidious readers 
will disdain such copies, McKitterick 
correctly notes how the availability of old 
books in facsimile form helped increase 
their value and regard as cultural objects.

Which leads to the final section of this 
excellent monograph: public exhibitions. 
If you have a copy, if you value the copy, 
would you not prize seeing the original 
even more? Before the rise of public 
museums in the 19th century, it would 
have been hard for anyone other than 
scholars, collectors, and booksellers to 
actually see old books. That began to 
change with regular displays at the great 
national museums and libraries in Paris 
and London in the 19th century, and then 
more broadly. The prestige of old books 
soared as culturally esteemed objects, an 
observation that culminates in McKit-
terick’s book in two happy outcomes: the 
huge and important Caxton exhibition of 
1877 in South Kensington and the parallel 
creation of what essentially became the 
modern bibliography that continues to 
inform praxis and scholarship today. The 
Caxton exhibition brought into one loca-
tion some 5,000 books and manuscripts, 
and it did so in a way that reflected a new, 
historically and technically grounded ap-
preciation of the relationship between the 
processes of making books and the books 
themselves. The exhibition thus both 
enshrined Caxton and printing in the na-
tional British epic of freedom, commerce, 
and Protestantism, while also giving birth 
to modern study of antiquarian books. 
Fittingly, the dust jacket of McKitterick’s 
book is an 1877 engraving of “Caxton 
shewing the first specimen of his printing 
to King Edward IV & the royal family in 
the abbey of Westminster, 1477.” But this 
happy ending is not, of course, the end.

The books in our special collections 
bear the marks of their own, individual 

histories—even where all evidence of 
“historicity” has been deliberately erased, 
effaced, or otherwise eliminated. They 
have been and will be valued differently 
at different times by different groups of 
people. The old books in McKitterick’s 
narrative are often as much the victims of 
love and care as they are of neglect, indif-
ference, or—worse—of mischief. While 
technological inventions play a major role 
in McKitterick’s story, technology only 
provides tools; it is not a driver. That said, 
the dark cloud that hovers silently over 
this book is the arrival of a thoroughly 
digital world, completely satisfied with 
and by digital surrogates, that cease to 
value (to any meaningful extent) the mate-
rial legacys represented in our collections. 
McKitterick’s is not an elegy for the old 
book; it is too smart for that. It may be that 
the proliferation of easily accessible digital 
surrogates of rare books will make the 
physical originals of greater cultural value 
in the eyes of an expanding constituency 
for them. But the balance of this fine book 
does not encourage an easy optimism.—
Michael Ryan, Columbia University.

Library Assessment Workgroup (Lesley 
University). Faculty Information and 
Research Needs: A Qualitative Study of 
Lesley University and Episcopal Divin-
ity School Faculty. Cambridge, Mass.: 
Lesley University Library, 2013. 126p. 
Available online at http://ir.flo.org/les-
ley/fileDownloadForInstitutionalItem.
action?itemId=2096&itemFileId=2101. 

This qualitative study examines in-
formation needs and the research and 
instructional behavior of faculty, as well 
as faculty perceptions of information 
use by students. Participants include 
faculty from the Art Institute of Boston, 
Episcopal Divinity School, Lesley College 
of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, 
and the Graduate Schools of Education 
and of Arts and Social Sciences. Meth-
ods are modeled on an ethnographic 
approach outlined by the Ethnographic 
Research in Illinois Academic Libraries 
Project (ERIAL). Findings are based on 



Book Reviews 623

responses from three focus groups, and 
25 individual interviews of faculty. 

The study is composed of eight parts, 
which include an abstract, executive 
summary, introduction, methodology, 
findings, key issues and implications, 
bibliography, and appendices. Appendix 
I includes source material used for the 
study which includes the information 
resource standards outlined by the As-
sociation of Theological Schools, and the 
Lesley University Library Mission State-
ment. Appendix II presents the questions 
used for the focus groups and faculty 
interviews. 

Results highlight four primary areas 
where the library can improve. These 
areas include the process for purchasing 
and accessing library resources, market-
ing of library services for and collabora-
tions with faculty, training opportunities 
for faculty, and scholarly communication 
in the digital age. Some respondents not-
ed that there are some specific discipline 
areas that lack adequate coverage in the 
library’s collection, and that additional 
funding is necessary to purchase these 
materials and meet this need. Another 
area of note involves alumni access to 
library electronic resources, especially 
databases. However, while this request 
is popular for many academic libraries, 
it is usually cost-prohibitive. Faculty also 
expressed confusion about how items are 
selected for purchase and how faculty 
can request library resource purchases. 
This suggests that the library needs to 
do a better job of marketing this service 
and educating faculty about the library’s 
collection development policy. Finally, 
faculty report high usage of Google 
Scholar in their own research and in that 
of their students, as well. This suggests 
that a library discovery tool that offers 
improved federated searching might im-
prove faculty and student usage of library 
owned digital content. 

Another general topic of concern 
involves services of the library and col-
laborations with faculty. Findings showed 
that faculty members with the highest 

reported levels of satisfaction were also 
those who have established relationships 
with librarians and library liaisons. In ad-
dition, participants suggested that librar-
ians need to create a more customizable 
service menu for faculty, and improve 
visibility of the liaison program. Respond-
ers also proposed the need to be more 
collaborative with faculty to improve 
collection development and library in-
struction. Collection development could 
be enhanced when librarians who lack 
specific subject expertise collaborate with 
faculty so that appropriate materials are 
purchased. Further collaboration between 
librarians and faculty could improve stu-
dent learning in the areas of information 
literacy and research training of students. 
One participant suggested that librar-
ians investigate faculty use of rubrics in 
evaluating student research projects as 
a way to gather more information about 
a department’s collection development 
needs. “Working with faculty members 
to identify the library element in these 
rubrics would help the library create the 
collections and services that will support 
student learning” (109). Additional com-
ments suggested that the library market 
itself as a “point-of-need” and to increase 
involvement with curriculum committees 
to receive and disseminate information. 

Comments also touched on potential 
training opportunities for faculty. Some 
participants expressed that library ori-
entation should be more fully developed 
and administered by each library liaison. 
Other participants expressed interest 
in more frequent and more advanced 
library instruction sessions for faculty. 
Such sessions could ameliorate database 
usage issues for some faculty. Suggested 
training methods include regularly sched-
uled programs, webinars, and streaming 
tutorials. Some faculty said they were of-
ten confused about whom to call for help 
with technology and software issues and 
suggested that the library create partner-
ships with technology support providers.

Additional feedback discussed the 
many challenges involving scholarly com-



624 College & Research Libraries November 2013

munication in the digital age. Some faculty 
complained about the continuing flood 
of information and the difficulty of shar-
ing information among faculty members 
with common interests. Some suggested 
that the library help faculty improve use 
of information alerts and e-mail filtering 
capabilities. Conversations with faculty 
members also mentioned some topics that 
overlap with those discussed in the library 
science scholarly literature, including 
open access publishing, copyright law, use 
of Wikipedia, and the nature of research. 

The authors also mentioned that fur-
ther study could focus on a more com-
prehensive analysis of student behaviors 
including writing and research. Additional 
analysis could focus on assignments com-
pleted by students to analyze how technol-
ogy is used to study, research, create, store, 
and share information. Seeking to enhance 
partnerships and collaborations with fac-
ulty could also provide an opportunity to 
evaluate how students seek information 
for class assignments. This would enable 
the library to evaluate its role in providing 
appropriate resources and services.

This study provides a plethora of 
anecdotal evidence of the many user 
behavioral trends observed in academic 
libraries. Indeed, academic libraries have 
reported over the years that faculty and 
students’ information-seeking behaviors 
have changed. For example, faculty and 
students are using more digital resources 
over paper materials, as well as using 
Google Scholar more than library elec-
tronic resources. This study also provides 
a useful model for implementing an 

ethnographic research approach across 
institutions containing different schools, 
campuses, and programs. 

However, this study also highlights 
some of the many limitations of qualita-
tive and ethnographic research method-
ology when performing a library needs 
assessment. In general, ethnographic 
research can easily create biased findings 
due to prior established relationships 
between any researcher and participant. 
In addition, qualitative research by nature 
offers subjective answers from each par-
ticipant, which unfortunately limits the 
conclusions drawn from the study. There 
are practical concerns when doing ethno-
graphic research as well. As noted by the 
authors, this study required an extensive 
amount of labor and time to complete all 
phases of the needs assessment. Extensive 
time and labor was required to organize 
and survey participants, as well as to 
transcribe the recorded responses of focus 
group and interview participants. Addi-
tional labor and time was also necessary 
to collect, organize, and code the survey 
data. Such labor demands and the long 
timetable for project completion make 
this type of research study impractical 
for many institutions. 

In addition, there are challenges with 
similar studies when it comes to data 
analysis. Since this type of study is based 
on highly open-ended survey questions, 
the broad diversity of possible responses 
makes analysis of the findings a challenge. 
It is difficult to not only find patterns in 
such diffuse data but also to draw clear 
and focused conclusions from the data. 
Unfortunately, findings from this sort of 
study also offer a paucity of generally 
applicable conclusions, which means that, 
while the institutions involved in the 
study will benefit from the results, most 
academic libraries will not. 

Given the study’s limitations, it is still 
a helpful model for academic libraries in-
terested in implementing an ethnographic 
research approach for a needs assessment. 
One hopes that future studies will over-
come some of this model’s limitations by 

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ACRL Awards 628
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ACRL Publications 604
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Bowker/RCL 530
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MIT Press Journals cover 3
NRC Research Press cover 4



Book Reviews 625

incorporating additional research trials 
using quantitative methods and include 
more narrowly focused survey questions 
of the faculty—which would not only pro-
vide findings more applicable to other in-
stitutions but would also provide a needs 
assessment model that more institutions 
could implement.—Anders Selhorst, Guil-
ford Technical Community College.

Gail Munde. Everyday HR: A Human Re-
sources Handbook for Academic Library 
Staff. Chicago: Neil-Schuman, 2013. 
182p. paper, $65.00 (ISBN 978-1-55570-
798-9). LCCN: 2012-18146.

There are many human resources hand-
books available for all types of employ-
ees, and this one is uniquely focused on 
academic library staff. The author, Gail 
Munde, explains that she wrote the book 
to “help demystify HR by providing basic 
explanations and rationales for the most 
common and practical applications of HR 
management in colleges and universi-
ties and, consequently, in their academic 
libraries” (xiii). Broken into six chapters, 
references at the end of each chapter, a 
summary, and an index, this handbook 
also includes helpful tables that sum-
marize often confusing status categories, 
laws, and performance evaluation criteria.

From the very first line of chapter 
1, Munde identifies the most basic HR 
principle—the “position” is the basic unit 
of all human resource (HR) transactions. 
She goes on to describe how the position 
(“box”) is separate from the individual, 
and how both are never static. Also in-
cluded in the first chapter are thorough 
explanations of positions and position 
management, including FLSA status (the 
terms and definitions that outline nonex-
empt/exempt determination), librarian 
status, and the principles of position 
description analysis. In describing the 
tenure-track or tenured library faculty, 
Munde clarifies that the common assump-
tion of tenure as a promise of lifetime 
employment has no basis in law. A helpful 
table (1.1) summarizes the typical position 
status categories in academic libraries.

Understanding the basic principles of 
position analysis can increase employee 
awareness of the point at which the posi-
tion (box) they inhabit requires a review 
for various reasons. Munde explains 
that position analysts are experts in 
understanding the various comparisons 
and classification levels that indicate the 
need for a position reclassification. She 
adds that when analyzing positions it 
is important to remember that position 
histories are records of the position (that 
is, the contents of the “box”), not of the 
employee.

Chapter 2 outlines basic employment 
laws, including a table (2.1) that describes 
relevant federal law and its purpose, and 
gives a URL for more information. Again, 
Munde writes not just for the human 
resource practitioner, but the employee 
as well. By describing the basic employ-
ment laws without using professional 
jargon, she gives the employee insight 
into “employment at will,” wage and 
hour laws, health and safety laws, and she 
even includes information that applies to 
student workers.

Next, the handbook describes the 
importance of the work group and of 
interpersonal relationships. Using early 
research on work groups as well as more 
recent research, Munde describes the 
influence of coworkers on work attitude, 
levels of engagement, effectiveness, and 
job satisfaction. Collegiality, and manag-
ing conflict, harassment, and bullying are 
all addressed in chapter 3.

In chapter 4, Munde makes the point 
that every supervisor has the power to 
either motivate, coach, mentor, or de-
velop the individuals who report to him 
or her; supervisors can also contribute to 
poor performance, low productivity, high 
turnover, and the individual’s feelings of 
value to the organization. Starting with 
the foundation and philosophy behind 
the management function of supervision, 
this chapter defines the expert knowledge, 
skills, and abilities that are hallmarks of su-
pervision. Supervisors spend most of their 
time communicating something; thus,