reviews.indd


many of them in color and many full-page 
plates, and concludes with appendices 
of German and French binding terms, 
though (a minor quibble) retaining the 
often antiquated spellings of the source 
manuals. 

One final observation: the meticulous 
quality of Foot’s work calls to mind the 
microscopic attention to detail charac-
teristic of Nicholson Baker’s novels, e.g., 
The Mezzanine (1990), the same author’s 
essays collected in The Size of Thoughts 
(1996), or of Patrick Süskind’s richly 
imagined, yet scrupulously researched 
and historically accurate novel of eigh-
teenth-century France, Perfume (1985). 
Certainly, authors of the increasingly 
popular mystery genre revolving around 
the oft en baffling ciphers and semiotics of 
old books and their constituent parts—in 
the tradition of Eco’s Name of the Rose 
(1981) and Pérez-Reverte’s Club Dumas 
(1993), now, of course, Dan Brown’s The 
Da Vinci Code (2003)—could weave many 
wonderful tales from the arcana and mi-
nutiae Mirjam Foot has brought together 
in this volume. Yet the principal audience 
for her work remains students of history 
and especially students (and practitio-
ners) of the history of the book. And to 
them it offers a valuable introduction, 
highly recommended.—Jeffrey Garrett, 
Northwestern University 

Huber, Mary Taylor, and Pat Hutchings. 
The Advancement of Learning: Building 
the Teaching Commons. San Francisco: 
Jossey-Bass, 2005. 187 p. alk. paper, $35 
(ISBN 078798115X). LC 2005-12459. 

This timely publication from the Carn-
egie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching reports on the state of scholar-
ship addressing teaching and learning. 
Historically, the teaching of higher educa-
tion has been described as a lonely profes-
sion. Committed professors, well trained 
in their disciplines, have had litt le op-
portunity to engage in collective inquiry 
into the learning process. The creation of 
a “teaching commons,” as the authors of 
this volume call it, provides opportunities 

Book Reviews 481 

for educators to explore and share ideas 
about teaching and learning. The authors 
argue, quite successfully, that teaching 
and learning, in and of themselves, are 
legitimate foci of scholarship and that all 
disciplines will benefit from the outcomes 
of research in these areas. 

Pedagogy and the science of learning 
are not new subjects to be explored by 
researchers. In recent years, however, 
great changes have occurred that call for 
a renewed inquiry. New generations of 
students, technological change, classroom 
renovation, and, indeed, as the authors 
note, “new ideas about learning itself” 
are changing the landscape. 

The Advancement of Learning is orga-
nized into seven chapters. Chapter One 
provides an historical overview of the 
scholarship relating to teaching and 
learning. This chapter contains an excel-
lent, succinct summary of significant 
curricular initiatives and studies under-
taken throughout the twentieth century. 
In addition to documenting the evolution 
of scholarship on teaching and learning, 
changes in the demographic makeup 
of students, the rise in interdisciplinary 
studies, and other pertinent variables are 
presented. 

The second chapter sets the agenda 
for the rest of the book. Here, the authors 
provide their operational definitions 
relating to the types of scholarship they 
are promoting. Taking their case beyond 
schools of education, where inquiry into 
learning and pedagogy typically reside, 
the authors invite all higher education 
faculty to join their teaching commons 
to share information, best practice, and 
collaborative research. 

Chapters Three through Six look at 
specific examples and contexts related to 
the scholarship of learning. The authors 
draw heavily upon their experience with 
the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship 
of Teaching (CASTL), citing numerous 
examples of individuals and programs 
supported by CASTL since its inception. 
CASTL’s Higher Education program 
consists of a center for advanced study 



482 College & Research Libraries 

that supports individuals in examining 
their own teaching and learning, colleges 
and universities developing on-campus 
programs in these areas, and collabora-
tion with associations and societies inter-
ested in promoting scholarship focused 
on learning and teaching. Examples of 
research highlighted in these chapters 
include a professor’s, of theoretical math-
ematics, work to redesign his teaching to 
better prepare his students to become ef-
fective secondary school math teachers, as 
well as similar examples from a variety of 
disciplines including history, English, and 
biology. The authors offer these case stud-
ies, not as scalable projects that will solve 
problems in teaching in these various 
disciplines, but as examples of a process 
of inquiry, engaged in by these professors, 
that resulted in eff ective change. 

At the center of Huber and Hutchings’ 
argument promoting the legitimacy of a 
scholarship of pedagogy and learning is 
their belief in the concept of the teaching 
commons. The commons is described 
in the abstract, as a place for scholars to 
come together to explore new approaches 
to teaching, to learn from each other, and 
to build continued interest and support 
for scholarly inquiry into teaching. 

In the final chapter of The Advancement 
of Learning, the authors present an action 
agenda. They do this by emphasizing 
five areas that promise, in their words, 
to contribute greatly to the scholarship 
of teaching and learning. The fi ve areas 
are: creating opportunities on campus to 
talk about learning; including students in 
these conversations; recognizing, on all 
levels, that teaching is “substantive and 
intellectual work”; creating new methods 
and ways of documenting and sharing 
classroom practice; and making the 
practice and theory of sound pedagogy 
available to everyone. 

Huber and Hutchings are seasoned 
scholars who are well prepared to ad-
dress the subject of this book. It is well 
researched, builds on earlier work by 
the Carnegie Foundation, and contains 
extensive notes and lengthy authoritative 

September 2006 

references. This book should be added to 
every academic library, where one hopes 
it will be read by presidents, provosts, 
academic administrators, librarians, and 
everyone else concerned with teaching 
and learning in higher education.—John 
W. Collins, Harvard University 

Tevis, Ray, and Brenda Tevis. The Image 
of Librarians In Cinema, 1917–1999. Jef-
ferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. 230 p. 
alk. paper, $45 (ISBN 0786421509). LC 
2004-29517. 

The authors, who are also librarians, 
have compiled a comprehensive study of 
major United States and British fi lms that 
feature librarian characters playing either 
major or supporting roles, referred to here 
as “reel librarians.” The work demon-
strates—through in-depth examinations 
of onscreen characteristics—that the im-
ages of reel librarians have changed little 
throughout the years and that the usual 
stereotypes persist. 

The book is divided into four chapters 
that focus on the portrayal of librarians 
during specific eras in the motion picture 
industry: silent fi lms, black-and-white 
fi lms, color films, and the age of multiplex 
theatres. In each chapter, librarian char-
acters are carefully examined in terms of 
age, hairstyle, eyeglasses, clothing style, 
workplace tasks, behavior, and lifestyle. 
The authors discovered that most reel 
librarians are middle-aged individuals, 
and they repeatedly refer to these char-
acters as “only 38” librarians. “Only 38” 
is a title of a 1923 silent film in which the 
38-year-old widow, Mrs. Stanley, takes 
a job at a college library despite her two 
grown children’s objections that she is 
too old. In spite of Mrs. Stanley finding 
romance and rediscovering part of her 
lost youth, the authors use the “only 38” 
phrase to indicate that that a reel librarian 
is middle-aged or older. 

Hairstyles are usually described as 
well-groomed and short or as the tra-
ditional pulled-back bun. The authors 
notice that reel librarians not wearing 
eyeglasses are often carrying eyeglasses.