Book Reviews  319

tion of library discovery systems can make better decisions in creating and advocating for 
better systems. 

The book would make a great addition to LIS coursework, specifically regarding ethics, 
and the topic is timely. Reidsma provides good definitions and writes in a fairly conversa-
tional tone, making the text accessible and easy to consume. Reidsma includes examples and 
explanations of the topic. Footnotes also provide good information and citations for readers. 
This book provided a lot of good information and has presented a case for further investiga-
tion into bias in library discovery systems.—Lizzy Walker, Wichita State University

Transforming Libraries to Serve Graduate Students. Crystal Renfro and Cheryl Stiles, eds., 
for the Association of College and Research Libraries. Chicago, IL: American Library As-
sociation, 2018. 445p. Paper, $88.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-4606-0). LC Z711.92.G73 T73.

Graduate students are not a monolithic user population. A doctoral student 
in a faculty track has a very different trajectory from a master’s student in 
a professional track. Graduate education also varies widely by academic 
discipline. Variation is inevitable when the groups you serve span the 
full range of scholarly knowledge. The editors of Transforming Libraries to 
Serve Graduate Students acknowledge that there is a great deal of variation 
between graduate students. Section 1 of the book explores the variation 
in information needs between graduate students. Chapters in Section 1 
address the needs of art students, music students, students studying for 

health sciences professions, business students, social work students, STEM students, gradu-
ate student instructors, Latinx students, and online students. It is clear from the beginning 
that collaboration is important in serving graduate students because no one librarian will be 
able to handle all the specialized needs outlined in this book. However, it is valuable for us 
to understand what our colleagues are doing, and several of the chapters in the section also 
have implications across disciplines. Chapter 4, on serving music students, has something 
to offer many librarians across fields, as it relates the experiences of a librarian teaching a 
semester-long graduate course for the first time. Chapter 12, on serving STEM students, is 
also cross-cutting, as it addresses how to help students pursue grant funding, find and use 
data sets, and navigate questions of scholarly communication, all of which are needs felt 
across campus departments. 

Section 2 of the book is about adapting library services for graduate students. It examines 
library spaces, LaTex workshops, GIS training, online scholarly identity development, citation 
management instruction, and interlibrary loan services. Readers interested in disciplinary 
differences such as those outlined in Section 1 will also want to read the chapter on LaTex 
instruction for STEM students, although the images provided in the chapter’s appendix are 
not very readable. Readers may want to skip some of the chapters on adapting spaces and 
interlibrary loan, as multiple chapters are offered on those topics and they cover much of 
the same content. For example, the chapters on space share similar findings from graduate 
students desirous of quiet, security, and privacy in their study spaces.

Section 3 focuses on information literacy instruction for graduate students. Discussions 
of programs offering data services, data management instruction, information literacy, and 
creating online profiles are offered. Because Section 2 also addresses library instruction in 
several of its chapters, the content in Sections 2 and 3 blur together.



320  College & Research Libraries March 2020

Section 4 examines the partnerships libraries can build to serve graduate students better. 
This section might also have been named “Graduate Student Outreach.” It describes programs 
such as open houses, a library staff working group, a partnership with a graduate school, and 
a graduate student advisory board. The partnership focus in this chapter alludes to one of the 
main values of Transforming Libraries to Serve Graduate Students: the possibility for collaboration 
within a library, within a campus, or with librarians at other institutions. If you are unsure 
of how to serve a group of graduate students on your campus, the book has a contact list of 
librarians who have done it and have recommendations on how to do it. 

This volume would benefit from some reorganization. Some chapters include abstracts, 
but many do not. Since the book contains 34 chapters with very different topics, it would be 
useful for readers to have abstracts to rely on to decide which chapters are of the most use for 
their needs. The four sections of the book are unbalanced in length and could be more inter-
nally cohesive. Section 1 is much longer than the others and might have been limited to only 
chapters addressing discipline-specific needs. Discussions of how to support the transition 
from undergraduate to graduate and how to support graduate students online would have fit 
better in the middle chapters, which deal with cross-disciplinary topics. Several of the chapters 
in Section 2 are about information literacy instruction and therefore might more appropriately 
be placed in Section 3. For instance, the discussions of citation management instruction, GIS 
instruction, and helping scholars develop their online identities overlap with the content of 
Section 3. Given that there is some redundancy in the book, some chapters could have been 
edited and the two sections could have been combined for more efficient and intuitive cover-
age of graduate student services. 

Section 1 is the most useful portion of the book, since it offers librarians a view into one 
another’s subject expertises. While librarians of all specialties will be familiar with concepts 
surrounding patrons’ need for study space, citation management training, interlibrary loans, 
and information literacy instruction, the particular needs of advanced scholars in each disci-
pline are not obvious to those who haven’t worked closely with those scholars. Readers might 
have benefited if the credentials of the authors were listed with the chapters they contributed 
to, in order to provide a better sense of the subject expertise brought to bear on each topic. 
Because the book addresses differences in user needs across disciplines that are shared by un-
dergraduates and faculty, the book is relevant to librarians serving other populations beyond 
graduate students. This book will be of the greatest use to librarians or libraries transitioning 
from serving undergraduate populations to graduate populations. That is a common occur-
rence, as librarians move to more research-intensive institutions and more institutions add 
additional graduate programs.—Sarah Rose Fitzgerald, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Culture of Digital Scholarship in Academic Libraries. Robin Chin Roemer and Verletta 
Kern, eds. Chicago, IL: American Library Association, 2019. 240p. Paper, $71.99 (ISBN 978-
0-8389-1897-5). LC 2019943587.

The culture of an institution is often seen as an emergent property: something that arises 
naturally from the interactions of policies, processes, communications, and organizational 
behaviors. Robin Chin Roemer and Verletta Kern have embraced this idea as the editors of 
The Culture of Digital Scholarship in Academic Libraries, whose 10 chapters serve collectively 
as an extended reflective case study of the digital scholarship practices of the University of 
Washington (UW). The book brings readers into UW’s “shared institutional workspace” (xiv),