College and Research Libraries Recent Publications BOOK REVIEWS Clark, Alice S., and Kay F. Jones, eds. Teaching Librarians to Teach: On-the-Job Training for Bibliographic Instruction Li- brarians. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1986. 232p. $18.50 (ISBN0-8108-1897-3). LC 86-6598. The title of this book is somewhat mis- leading, and the editors do not really live up to the aims they state for it in their in- troduction. Inspired by one of Joan Or- mondroyd' s workshops on ''Teaching the Teachers," the authors decide that they may not be alone in their need for informa- tion on how to provide on-the-job training for librarians engaged in bibliographic in- struction. This is the kernel of the idea for a book that will help academic librarians, presumably reference heads and biblio- graphic instruction coordinators in partie- ยท ular, plan programs to improve the teach- ing skills of their colleagues. A survey of Association of Research Libraries institu- tions, which is briefly reported in chapter 4, reveals that there is a definite need for such a book, since formal programs to im- prove librarians' abilities to teach are rare. A panel of expert contributors is assem- bled, and the result is another volume on bibliographic instruction. Perhaps three or four of the chapters ac- tually make good on the promise of the ti- tle and truly pertain to techniques for on- the-job training. Chapter 2, by Marilyn Lutzker, consists of observations on how to identify good potential teachers, who are the raw material for on-the-job train- ing programs. Chapter 4, following some preliminaries on the kinds of skills re- quired for good library instruction, re- . ports the results of the survey mentioned above on what research libraries are doing to build these skills in librarians who teach as part of their regular job assignments. Only fourteen research libraries indicated that they have formal programs in this area, although several others are planning programs, and yet others have what the author might consider partial programs, or at least serious efforts, in place. Perhaps more worthwhile than some of the other, more general, material in this book and more germane to its stated purpose would have been some follow-up to this survey by the editors. It might have been useful to have a detailed description of the fourteen programs said to be in existence. Also, it might have been enlightening to have more elaboration from institutions who responded, for example, that they did make efforts to instruct librarians on how to develop evaluation instruments or on how to define performance objectives. Joan Ormondroyd' s practical and useful description of how to plan and conduct a workshop on teaching librarians to teach is chapter 8. It includes as appendixes sample instructions to trainees making presentations, sample forms for critiquing presentations, selected rules for good teaching, sample situations for workshop problem-solving sessions, and suggested discussion topics. Chapter 10 is the last of the chapters that might be thought of as having direct relevance to learning how to teach on the job and is essentially about learning by doing. Sandra Sandor Kerbel provides some reminiscences of difficult or instructive moments in her own career as a librarian-teacher. The remaining chapters of the book ap- pear to be offered as a basic handbook for the aspiring teacher-librarian. They are 371 372 College & Research Libraries mainly practical guides to the elements of library user education or reviews of the lit- erature on a particular aspect of that very broad and much discussed subject. Al- though some of the essays have no schol- arly apparatus, most make reference to many of the old chestnuts in the field, for example, Lubans, Educating the Library User, and Roberts, Library Instruction for Li- brarians, and to numerous articles in the journal literature. Except in one chapter, there is a conspicuous absence of frequent references to two books now considered classic texts: Beaubien and others, Learn- ing the Library, and Oberman and Strauch, Theories of Bibliographic Education: Designs for Teaching. If the book is meant to serve as a beginning textbook for on-the-job training, it would have benefited by the inclusion of a general selected bibliogra- phy. After chapter 1, which introduces the need for the volume, the essays loosely follow the progression of organizing to do bibliographic instruction, from setting ob- jectives to evaluating results. A few chap- ters seem to be dropped in at random: the results of the ARL survey, for example, and an excellent and well-documented es- say by Linda Lucas, "Educating Librari- ans to Provide User Education to Disabled Students." The specialized nature of Lu- cas' chapter makes it seem out of place in this book and raises the question of the ab- sence of similar essays on other special groups, such as minority students in Head Start-type programs or international stu- dents, who are appearing on campuses in rapidly growing numbers, presenting fer- tile ground for the library instruction li- brarian. There seems little really new in this slen- der volume. The title has an appealing draw, but Ormondroyd' s chapter is about the only one that actually delivers on its promise.-Paula D. Watson, The Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Douglas, Mary Tew. How Institutions Think. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Univ. Pr., 1986. 146p. $19.95 (ISBN 0-8156- 2369-0). LC 86-5695. In How Institutions Think, the noted an- thropologist Mary Douglas brings the dis- July 1987 tanced and objective perspective of her discipline to an examination of modern so- ciety. While she acknowledges the role of calculated self-interest in human life, she notes correctly that the prevailing zeitgeist of individualistic calculation hardly re- quires that the importance of rational choice be defended. Her emphasis is else- where, on demonstrating the inherently social nature of individual cognition, the a priori role of society in dictating the very categories and terms of thought that ulti- mately defeat simple reductionist efforts to find the causes for individual choice and action. Douglas draws widely from sources in and out of the social sciences in building her case. Her eclecticism in finding the strands of her argument in Mancur Olson's classic Logic of Collective Action (which brilliantly draws the limits of col- lective action), in examples drawn from social psychology and from the history of science, and even in the nomenclature used by California vintners, makes this short book a stimulating, but also a diffi- cult, adventure in the history of modern thought. The main threads of Douglas' argument are drawn from the genius of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and Ludwik Fleck's studies of the philosophy of sci- ence. Her selection of Durkheim-who was primarily a student of primitive soci- eties, and of Fleck, a student of modern society's defining institution-follows strategically and deliberately from her premise that it is both too convenient and very wrong to exempt modern society from an objective functional analysis of thought systems on the assumption that organic, unspoken, and sacred belief sys- tems structuring individual thought can be found only in primitive societies. Much of Douglas' analysis is devoted to refuting various theoretical efforts to bal- ance the books of social exchange in an at- tempt to redeem informed self-interest as the exclusive motor of social action. In- stead, Douglas argues that only by accept- ing the values and thought categories of the larger group can individuals claim a sense of their identity. Indeed, she argues that true intellectual freedom must begin