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Lewis focuses on forces that have caused disruptive change in libraries, but early on 
he advises academic librarians to “find opportunities to be the disrupter who develops 
new services and products that use the available technologies with new business mod-
els.” In discussing how the physical book is changing, he compares it to the changes the 
music industry has already undergone. In looking at changes in the scholarly record, 
Lewis rightly points out concerns about lost information. Digital preservation is one of 
the challenges every library needs to address; and, collectively, we need to find solu-
tions on preserving content more quickly. How we adapt and thrive when conditions 
are likely to continue to change presents us with both challenges and opportunities. 

In his conclusion, Lewis outlines the ten steps that are necessary for effective change 
in academic libraries. It is perhaps the 10th step, “Sell the Change,” that may be the 
most challenging because Lewis correctly asserts that we need to articulate why new 
investments are needed to our administrators even as we see expenditures in other 
more traditional areas reduced. It is perhaps worth considering that, not only should 
this work be required reading for students in library and information management 
programs, but also for members of campus library advisory committees to help them 
obtain a better picture of the outside forces that we have been dealing with and the 
forces of change that require investment in our libraries for the future. 

Our future in higher education is dependent on responding to disruptive forces with 
positive change; some of the proposals will mean making hard decisions and tough 
choices. However, academic libraries are not only often the heart of the institution, they 
are essential for supporting higher education. This work has many practical sugges-
tions for librarians who wish to make change and ensure that we remain relevant on 
our campuses. In view of recent events, our libraries may become even more important 
on each of our campuses as pointed out by Chris Bourg, head of MIT libraries, who 
recently shared in an Educause talk on libraries and our role in higher education, that 
we may not need to save libraries, but libraries may indeed be what saves us. David 
W. Lewis provides a framework for ensuring that our libraries are relevant and con-
tinue to contribute in the 21st century and make a difference for higher education by 
doing those things others on campus cannot, emphasizing that we must look closely 
at those things that need doing versus continuing to do what has been traditional. It 
is a thoughtful and inspiring book that is well worth the time to read for oneself as 
well as to read with others in your organization for discussion and conversation about 
what strategies make sense for your own institution. Everyone may not agree with all 
the proposals, yet David Lewis has produced a work that will inform librarians, and 
only by engaging in conversations about possible directions that will work within 
your culture, your campus, and your type of academic library will you find a path for 
relevance and success at your own institution. I believe this book should be required 
reading for all students in library or information management schools interested in 
working in academic libraries.—Teresa A. Fishel, Macalester College 

R. David Lankes (with contributions from Wendy Newman, Sue Kowalski, Beck Tench, 
and Cheryl Gould). The New Librarianship Field Guide. Cambridge, Mass.; London, 
England: MIT Press, 2016. 226p. Paper, $22 (ISBN 978262529082). LC 2015-39943.

R. David Lankes, celebrated author/editor of The Atlas of New Librarianship (2011) 
has now published a new book, also from MIT Press, as a companion to the Atlas. Its 
purpose is to serve as a handbook for implementing the ideas promoted in the Atlas. 
At the time of publication, Lankes was Professor and Dean’s Scholar for the New Li-
brarianship at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies and Director of the 
Information Institute of Syracuse. Subsequently, Lankes has assumed the position of 
director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Library & Information Science 

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398 College & Research Libraries March 2017

and serves as the 2016–2017 Follett Chair at Dominican University’s Graduate School 
of Library and Information Science.

This text was apparently intended for classroom use. Included are “Observations 
from the Field” (“field notes, tricks, and observations”) concerning material presented 
in fourteen of the book’s eighteen chapters, a section of “frequently asked questions” 
(that is, questions that might be used in classroom conversations or on exams), as well 
as a list of “Discussion Points” arranged by chapter. This project is laid out in a very 
similar fashion to (and possibly modeled on) Robert E. Quinn’s course, Deep Change: 
Discovering the Leader Within (1996) and The Deep Change Field Guide (2012).

Lankes’ stated intention is to situate libraries and librarians in their communities 
(very loosely defined) and describe how librarians can effect “radical change” in those 
communities, to “prepare them to be socially responsible.” He assumes that all librar-
ians are principled and doing good work while ignoring those who aren’t and weren’t, 
such as librarians who worked in law libraries to help prepare their employers’ case in 
defense of Jim Crow laws or of those corporate librarians who assist theirs in finding 
ways to defraud the government at the community’s expense. Another unfounded 
assumption is that all libraries are the same and share the same mission: for instance, 
in a discussion of public libraries he would necessarily have to treat the public library 
of the village of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, as if it were the same thing with the 
same purpose as a research institution like the New York Public Library.

Although the author claims to be neither philosopher nor priest, he sure sounds like 
both—and variously as an evangelist, revolutionary, and self-help advisor. Ultimately 
the voice of the politician prevails, as Lankes promises to make librarianship great 
again. You would think, in a treatise devoted to remaking librarianship to be a more 
socially engaged profession, one would find more references to the influential library 
philosopher S.R. Ranganathan. Alas, he is barely mentioned, while other pioneers and 
advocates for a socially aware and responsible librarianship, including Sanford Berman 
and the Progressive Librarians Guild, are not mentioned at all.

Lankes demurs. He claims that his approach, “New Librarianship,” is “simply 
librarianship” but that “many will disagree; they use this phrase to distinguish this 
approach from previous approaches.” To simplify matters, he has adopted this term, 
a phrase whose use he initiated, consistently uses, and always capitalizes. I agree 
that what the author presents is simply librarianship, although I challenge anyone to 
identify what‘s new in what is presented.

“How may I help you?” Lankes writes, is “one of the most arrogant questions we 
could ask: it assumes that the power to help lies exclusively in our hands . . .we are the 
ones to help our members, who so clearly are in need of assistance.” He ignores the 
fact that, in many other professions, this question is also routinely asked and without 
offense. He suggests that we instead ask questions like “What do you love?” or “What 
are you passionate about?” As for myself, I would feel uncomfortable asking a patron 
these questions and irritated if asked one when visiting another library. There are, of 
course, the expected typos (such as “Liberians” for “Librarians”) and as has unfortu-
nately become the norm in academic book publishing, the index is woefully inadequate. 

I do find points of agreement with Lankes. For instance, I agree wholeheartedly 
with his disdain for referring to our patrons as “customers,” though I am not satisfied 
with his suggested replacement: “members.” I also applaud Lankes’ insistence that 
librarians and libraries rely too heavily on metrics to assess performance and that we 
must identify other means for evaluating our relative success.

Reading the Field Guide, I wonder who Lankes’ intended audience might be. It 
seems to me that he is telling librarians things they already know and nonlibrarians 
things they don’t care to know. Every few years something “new” comes along that 



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promises to be the profession’s salvation and collectively our new vision and path. It 
rarely is.—Fred J. Hay, Appalachian State University

Aaron D. Purcell. Digital Library Programs for Libraries and Archives: Developing, Manag-
ing, and Sustaining Unique Digital Collections. Chicago: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 
2016. 224p. Paper, $85 (ISBN 0-838-91450-0). 

If ever there was a multipurpose tool for digital library texts, Aaron Purcell’s Digital 
Library Programs for Libraries and Archives would qualify. By the author’s own ambitious 
admission, the book serves to provide a full suite of instruments: a history of digital 
libraries; a review of the current state of the field; strategies for planning and managing 
digital projects; and step-by-step instructions for the creation of a digital library project 
plan. Throughout, it includes practical fill-in-the-blank questionnaires and a few charts 
and matrices. It is not hard to imagine these worksheets propelling a semester-long 
graduate seminar forward or circulating during a staff retreat where librarians wrestle 
with a moribund digital project. This slim and wholly readable volume has something 
for everyone, in part because its author has been a teacher, a hands-on archivist, a 
digital-projects manager, and an administrator. The book ultimately serves a variety 
of audiences because Purcell has lived many professional lives, in varied roles, and 
his intention is to leave no one behind. 

Purcell’s oeuvre, so far, includes two practical guides focused on the work and poli-
cies of archives and special collections and monographs on American history. It is in 
the hands of a historian then, that this volume maintains the delicate balance between 
history, theory, and how-to. This balance may well safeguard the volume from the 
dangers of technical obsolescence. That is, rather than fill its chapters with technical 
specifications, file format types, and specific software solutions, Purcell refers to tools 
and programs with a devil-may-care casualness and a historian’s eye for the right 
amount of detail versus big-picture views. This book has no intention of serving as a 
software advertisement or a showcase of current digital projects. You won’t find lists of 
project URLs (which are bound to change during the long arc of history that archivists 
abide by), nor will you find screen captures of web pages, or detailed comparisons of 
software platforms. Having cast aside these familiar tropes, we are left with historical 
and contemporary issues and questions of real consequence. 

As it turns out, we are better off without the URLs and screenshots. The book is 
divided into three sections. The first, “Theory and Reality of Digital Libraries” is fol-
lowed by two hands-on sections, “Building Digital Libraries Programs: A Step-by-Step 
Process,” and “Digital Library Planning Exercises.” Each section balances well-chosen 
vocational details alongside the sorts of weighty questions librarians and archivists are 
sometimes eager to sidestep. For example, the most critical library literature reader 
might not blink an eye if a book attending to the history of library technology omits 
reference to its roots in the 1960s Department of Defense, yet in the hands of a historian, 
this detail unselfconsciously launches a brisk jaunt through two chapters that trace 
the emergence of digital humanities, the Google Books mass digitization effort, the 
Internet Archive, open access, crowdsourcing, the Digital Public Library of America, 
born-digital records, and digital forensics. Having traveled this historic path, we’re 
meant to feel grounded and steadfast with a “look how far we’ve come” sensibility. 

But these historical chapters end on something of a dark note, pointing to a long 
economic downturn and its effect on library services. The defunding of public institu-
tions, including archives, historical societies, and special collections, has taken a toll 
on our commitment to core services (or rather, what we once thought were our core 
services). Is it sustainable and ethical to hire fewer staff, buy fewer resources, and pay 
less attention to our physical collections to buy the equipment and services needed 

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