reviews Book Reviews 203 (CMP Books, 2000). Chapter ten ad- dresses funding adaptive technology and covers personal, government, and private-sector sources of funds. Appendix materials comprise 50 per- cent of the book. Especially useful are those providing Microsoft Windows 98 and Apple Macintosh keyboard shortcuts (welcomed greatly by this Mac user with low vision). Moreover, there are appen- dices detailing product, platform, and vendor contact information for more than two hundred products, arranged by type of disability: visual, hearing, speech, mo- tor, and learning. The only outdated in- formation was found for Productivity Works (now isSound), which discontin- ued the selling, enhancing, and support- ing of its talking browser, pwWebSpeak, on January 1, 2001. The appendices also include a directory of national disability-related clearinghouses and or- ganizations. The directory is followed by a list of toll-free telephone hotlines of na- tional organizations concerned with dis- ability and children’s issues, appendices summarizing key provisions of adaptive technology and disability rights laws, and a list of RESNA Technology Assistance Project state contacts. The volume con- cludes with an eight-page subject index. Because the four-page table of contents provides a detailed outline of each chap- ter, the index is useful, but not essential as a finding tool. Much of the information covered by Lazzaro is similarly treated in Computer and Web Resources for People with Disabili- ties, 3rd ed. (The Alliance for Technology Access, 2000). With recent mergers and acquisitions among adaptive technology vendors, Lazzaro’s book is more up-to-date than the ATA volume. On the other hand, the ATA work provides a quick and uniform overview of a particu- lar adaptive technology, what it is used for, its potential users, which features to consider, and the costs. Adaptive Technolo- gies for Learning & Work Environments also complements Barbara Mates’s Adaptive Technology for the Internet, which is aimed primarily at librarians. Lazzaro’s work is more current than Mates’s with respect to adaptive technology and does not suf- fer from the high incidence of inaccurate URLs that is a problem in the Mates vol- ume. Written in nontechnical language for people with disabilities, Adaptive Technolo- gies for Learning & Work Environments is also a resource for employers, educators, service providers, and the families of those individuals. With ALA’s recent pas- sage of the Library Services for People with Disabilities Policy and its Century Scholarship (funding services or accom- modation for a library school student with disabilities admitted to an ALA-accredited library school), this is also a recommended read for librarians and library school faculty. Libraries with Lazzaro’s first edition will want to replace it with this one. Recommended for all types of libraries. Where appropriate, li- braries may want to consider the cross-platform CD-ROM version of the book, which makes the text accessible in HTML to users with disabilities.—J. Chris- tina Smith, Boston University. Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, Alfred Hessel, and Reuben Peiss. The Memory of Man- kind: The Story of Libraries Since the Dawn of History. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Pr., 2001. 188p. $39.95 (ISBN 1584560495). LC 00-68213. Imagine a neatly designed Bauhaus building that, having survived the war, is forced to accommodate an unantici- pated extension in 1950 and a whole new wing in 2001. The result is a pastiche of styles and functions. If you live in an “his- toric” house that has been adapted to dif- ferent iterations of modernity, you know what I mean. Entering the present book is not unlike walking through a piece of historic architecture that has not been well served by a succession of well-meaning owners. In 1925, Alfred Hessel, a professor at the University of Göttingen, published Geschichte der Bibliotheken, a short survey (Überblick) of libraries from ancient Alex- andria to the early twentieth century. In 204 College & Research Libraries March 2002 1950, Reuben Peiss translated Hessel’s survey into English—A History of Librar- ies (Washington D.C.: Scarecrow Press, 1950)—and added material that would bring the volume “more nearly up-to-date.” Peiss tells us that he trans- lated Hessel because in the late 1940s, there was “no adequate short history of libraries in English.” Peiss’s volume was nothing, if not humble. Where the origi- nal came with a suite of plates illustrat- ing various libraries, Peiss’s History seems to have been reproduced from typescript on mediocre paper and contains no illus- trations. Now comes the present volume: the same core text, Peiss’s additions, plus a new chapter by Don Heinrich Tolzmann further updating the text, a handsome dust wrapper, many illustrations, and a new title that keys on the current vogue for “memory.” Although the title, Tolzmann notes, is from Goethe, that does not make it true or helpful. Peiss was wise to stick with the original. Whatever else libraries are, they are not “the memory of mankind.” Libraries may make certain memories possible, but memory is a func- tion of history and culture. It is con- structed; it is not implicit in inventories of books and documents. The house re- ceives an unnecessary face-lift. When Peiss set out to translate Hessel, the history of libraries was, to say the least, an undercultivated area. When Tolzmann and Oak Knoll Press returned to Hessel/Peiss, the same could not be said. For the past two decades, library history has ridden the crest of the history of the book wave and come into its own. Tolzmann is oblique about why he thought a new version of the work was needed, though the project seems to have grown out of a course he taught or teaches in the University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science. How- ever, the book that Oak Knoll has brought out does not seem aimed at library school students but, rather, at a more general public of collectors and the curious. None- theless, it is fair to ask, Who is the audi- ence here? Although the title, The Memory of Man- kind, promises the world, the book has little to do with “mankind.” Rather, its focus is Europe and the Western tradition. Hessel was clear on that point. In a short preface, he acknowledged that he would cover only libraries in the European tra- dition, leaving those of India and East Asia for others. Although Peiss and Tolzmann gesture to the wider world, their interests are clearly closer to home. Moreover, Hessel’s book is especially— and understandably—concerned with li- braries in Central Europe. As such, it is an odd candidate for reissuing in English in the early twenty-first century. There is a large cultural gap between the world for which Hessel wrote and the contem- porary scene. Hessel could make assump- tions about his audience that Tolzmann cannot. He could assume that his reader knew about the likes of Mabillon, Montfaucon, Muratori, and Magliabechi. He could assume that his catalog of princes and libraries in Central Europe was part of the Bildung of his audience. But Tolzmann should not. Hessel could dispense with footnotes because he was only writing an Überblick. The Memory of Mankind would have benefited not only from footnotes, but also from appendices that would help bridge the gap between Germany in 1925 and North America circa 2000. Tolzmann’s chief contribution to this version of Hessel is a concluding chap- ter, “Into the Information Age.” Despite the title, however, it is concerned largely with routine administrative issues, statis- tics, and consortial groups. When Tolzmann does address the digital library, he does so with a comfortable complai- sance: “although the basic function of li- braries will, hence, continue to remain the same [sic], how it [sic] goes about fulfill- ing that task will evolve.” Perhaps, but not very useful as a perspective. I find The Memory of Mankind a strange publishing project. Not only do the three authors have their own styles and inter- ests, but they are separated by historical and cultural formations as well. It is not clear what prompted Oak Knoll to take Book Reviews 205 on this project. It has done such fine work previously resurrecting titles that deserve new life that I am puzzled by their judg- ment in this case. Better that Tolzmann had begun ab ovo and written his own history of libraries, one that had the free- dom and space to adapt old stories to new purposes. As it stands, however, this is a book that will probably satisfy neither the scholar, nor the librarian, nor the collec- tor.—Michael Ryan, University of Pennsyl- vania. Weller, Ann C. Editorial Peer Review: Its Strengths and Weaknesses. Medford, N.J.: Information Today (ASIST Mono- graph Series), 2001. 342p. $35.60 (members); $44.50 (nonmembers) (ISBN 1573871001). LC 00-47204. The process of refereeing articles submit- ted for publication to scholarly and sci- entific journals is of central concern in academe and the professions. The deci- sion to publish or not to publish is one on which sciences advance, the orderly progress of knowledge is achieved, and individual careers depend. It is a process through which, presumably, all new con- tributions are validated by the judgments of authors’ and researchers’ professional peers and deemed fit to join the knowl- edge base of the discipline Attention has been given to this phe- nomenon only during the past few de- cades. Prior to the 1960s, there was virtu- ally no interest in the phenomenon, at least as a researchable topic in itself. Indeed, it is questionable that there were enough problems in the process to raise questions of its legitimacy, its pervasiveness, or its ultimate impact in the scholarly commu- nity prior to the expansion of research, of the number of research journals, and of the general level of interest in the equity of access to publishing outlets prior to the 1960s. Although it was not unknown for editors of scholarly and research journals to send manuscripts out to be evaluated by experts not immediately associated with the journals, it was not a common practice in many areas until well after World War Two and even into the 1970s in some disciplines. The book at hand is not a piece of origi- nal research or the result of an indepen- dent investigation. The author’s purpose is much more modest. Her avowed intent has been simply “to conduct a systematic review of published studies on the edito- rial peer review process” from the earli- est studies she could identify through her closing date of 1997. Weller presents here a highly structured approach to the or- ganization of the reviews, beginning each chapter with an overview of the issues involved. She posits an explicit set of questions to be answered and a set of in- clusion criteria for the research reports included in each section before describ- ing those articles that address her ques- tions and meet her criteria. Each chapter concludes with a general assessment of the research in the area treated in it and recommendations for further research. Most of these suggest more work along the same line and, for the most part, are directed toward practical ends—to im- prove the editorial review process. It is a practical, instrumental approach. The array of concerns this book ad- dresses extends much further than the simple practicality this description might suggest. Enough research has been con- ducted and published over the past four decades to produce a respectable show- ing, and she touches on every conceivable aspect of the issues involved in the pro- cess. After a general introduction to the problem, she considers studies of rejected manuscripts, the composition of editorial review boards, and the role of editors. She continues to evaluate research into the various roles of reviewers, their biases and agreements, and the use of special- ized reviewers of statistical elements of research. She concludes the book with a chapter on the role of referees in the elec- tronic environment and a final short chap- ter of general recommendations and ob- servations on the editorial review process. 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