209

Book Reviews

H. Faye Christenberry, Angela Courtney, 
Liorah Golomb, and Melissa S. Van 
Vuuren. Literary Research and Postco-
lonial Literatures in English: Strategies 
and Sources. Literary Research: Strategies 
and Source, 11. Lanham, Md.: Scare-
crow Press, 2012. 262p. $60.00 (ISBN 
9780810883833). LC 2012-009243.

Let me begin by removing any suspense. I 
found this to be a very useful book in both 
argument and format, clearly written, 
systematic in approach and scope, full of 
good ideas and good practices. An inte-
gral strength of this work lies in the ways 
in which it presents actual-hypothetical 
cases not simply in the abstract but step-
by-step consonant with actual—or at least 
preferred—practice.

Longitudinally, and complementing 
earlier volumes in this series, Literary 
Research focuses writing by citizens of 
the former British colonies in Africa, 
South Asia, and the Caribbean, begin-
ning in 1947 (except South Africa from 
1910) with the manumission of India and 
continuing to the present. Latitudinally, 
the full range of formats and content is 
addressed, with chapters on basics of 
online searching; general library refer-
ence sources; library catalogs; print 
and electronic bibliographies; scholarly 
journals; literary reviews; magazines and 
newspapers; microform and digital col-
lections; manuscripts and archives; and 
web resources. A well-formulated final 
chapter deals with “researching thorny 
issues,” and the work concludes with a 
lengthy appendix in the form of outreach 
that systematically addresses the major 
sources “in allied disciplines.” While not 
all scholars in these disciplines will agree 
with all the choices made here, they can 
serve as a useful point of departure.

It is especially gratifying to find that 
significant attention has been devoted 
to ferreting out book reviews. It is little 
wonder that academics and others find 

writing reviews to be vex-
atious—little intellectual 
credit is granted them and, 
once published, they tend 
to lapse into oblivion almost 
immediately. This is a partic-
ular pity; in theory, at least, 
effective approaches to a specific body of 
literature should begin with rounding up 
as many reviews as possible of that corpus 
for orientation and evaluation. Easily 
said, yet there can scarcely be any genre 
of literature more protean than the book 
review. Ideally, cadres in all disciplines 
should organize systematic ways to track 
reviews, but that has yet to occur. One 
might have expected that the advent of 
the World Wide Web would have made 
doing this both more routine and quicker, 
but not really so. Not even close.

Using works by three postcolonial 
writers (Vikram Seth, Earl Lovelace, J.M. 
Coetzee), the authors go on to sketch 
(192–95) ways to overcome this deficiency, 
all of which are probably more labor-
intensive at present than they ought or 
need to be, and hence all the more in need 
of this kind of explicit attention. The dis-
cussion of the ways in which the authors 
demonstrate how a meager first harvest 
of citations to published book reviews of 
the works of these authors mushrooms 
into a much larger number is an object 
lesson in the virtues—and rewards—of 
long-term persistence and productive 
dissatisfaction.

Another genre of sources that is well-
covered are the newspaper indexes, over-
used by undergraduates and underused 
by advanced students and faculty, the 
former because they are led to them by li-
brarians and classmates, the latter because 
they have traditionally found it unpleas-
antly cumbersome to troll through micro-
film and microfiche, often with little or no 
profit. Speaking of traditional research, a 
further appeal of Literary Research is that 



210 College & Research Libraries March 2013

the authors do not treat print sources as 
hopelessly passé, and, since so much of 
this/these literature/s remains elusive, 
the recommended search strategies go 
well beyond the norm. (Thus the only CIP 
subject heading, “Literature—Research—
Data Processing,” [iv] seriously misleads.)

Although probably not its purpose, 
the Appendix illustrates, if in reverse, 
that works like Literary Research can—in 
fact, would—benefit other than literary 
scholars per se. For instance, historians, 
whose writ covers the entire past and 
therefore whose work ideally has a sym-
biotic relationship with virtually every 
discipline, should certainly be aware 
of some of the works discussed here—
after all, are not all historical sources 
also literary creations? To take just one 
example, the MLA International Bibliog-
raphy database contains thousands of 
citations to the work of, and about, the 
chroniclers of the Indies of the sixteenth 
to eighteenth centuries, and adds scores 
more each year. Scholars interested in the 
history of the Americas—and not only 
the Americas—for that period need to be 
aware of the judgments of nonhistorians 
on these sources. While the sheer number 
of relevant citation materials found in the 
MLA International Bibliography is likely 
to be daunting, work that ignores or is 
unaware of them will most likely prove 
vulnerable. Much more interdisciplinary 
osmosis is needed, and Literary Research 
is a step in that direction.—David Henige, 
University of Wisconsin.

David Shumaker. The Embedded Librar-
ian: Innovative Strategies for Taking 
Knowledge Where It’s Needed. Medford, 
N.J.: Information Today, Inc, 2012. 
232p. $49.50 (ISBN 9781573874526). 
LC2012-017662.

“Embedded librarianship” has existed 
for some time and has taken on many 
forms in the most current decades. It’s 
a model developed out of the practice 
from the medical and scientific fields and 
in current decades has been massaged 
into a new role, revitalizing the tapering 

statistics of information professionals and 
librarianship. Technology has helped to 
more easily facilitate the practice of plac-
ing information professionals in strategic 
partnerships with faculty, student groups, 
and others within the campus community. 
David Shumaker, clinical associate profes-
sor at the School of Library and Informa-
tion Science at the Catholic University 
of America, in The Embedded Librarian: 
Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge 
Where It’s Needed has surveyed the litera-
ture, studied embedded programs, and 
written the first comprehensive survey 
of this practice. He offers a varied look, 
using analysis, case studies, templates, 
and exercises, which will prove valuable 
to those already involved in embedded-
ness or those considering endeavoring 
into the field.

Shumaker bases his book in two be-
liefs, already prevalent within the infor-
mation profession: the library world “is 
changing and must change.” In launching 
from this premise, he looks at a variety of 
organizations and, in doing so, identifies 
the characteristics that contribute to suc-
cessful embedded librarianship, as well 
as explaining how information profes-
sionals in all types of library settings are 
using embedded librarianship principles 
to enhance how they engage their library 
communities. The author looks at pub-
lic, academic, school, medical, law, and 
many other types of specialized libraries 
in analyzing how the practice of being 
embedded has enhanced librarianship. 
The chapters are laid out in a coherent 
outline that follows the arc of this practice 
through its history to its implementation 
in various library settings. 

The book is divided into two parts: 
a historical and analytical overview, 
followed by a second section that gives 
the framework for successful embedded 
librarianship. Part One addresses the 
historical aspects, gives a summation of 
embedded librarians in higher educa-
tion, the health sciences, corporations, 
nonprofits, government, schools, and 
public libraries. Part Two strives to offer