College and Research Libraries 278 College & Research Libraries the title has its roots within the field of librarianship itself. Status anxiety, the endless debate over labels, the desire to re-gender (or, perhaps more accurately, de-gender) librarianship all contribute to the steady devaluation and wearing away (i.e. erosion) of attributes tradi- tionally associated with women. Harris makes a compelling argument that it is just these female attributes, under siege and eroding, that set librarianship apart, that give it a unique character. Harris's most significant contribution to the debate over the meaning of pro- fessionalism may well be her call to librarians to understand the value of women's work and female-intensive oc- cupations on their own terms; not as some lesser version of "real" work, i.e., the work done by men. According to Harris, this new understanding would entail, among other things, "a (re)com- mitment to service (based on a female rather than a male model)" and an expli- cit commitment to "embrace a feminist analysis" of librarianship. While fully supportive of the demand to apply fem- inist analyses to female-intensive oc- cupations and having no quarrel with Harris's insistence that we break away from masculinist definitions of value, I find in her argument for a return to some sort of female principle a certain essential- ist flavor that some may feel is divisive. In light of the overall persuasiveness of Har- · ris' s argument, however, this is a relatively minor point. What a pleasure it is to view librarianship through such a clear feminist lens.-Ellen Broidy, University of California, Irvine. Advances in Preservation and Access, vol. 1 (1992). Eds. Barbara Buckner Higginbotham and Mary E. Jackson. Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1992. 297p. $55 per year (ISBN 0-88736-787-9, ISSN 1063-2263). This annual, which complements two others in Meckler's recent Volumes in Library Administration and Practice, is an important and useful enterprise. At first glance, however, the prospect of another series, even on so important a topic as preservation, may dismay librarians May1993 with overburdened serials budgets. That a substantial number of contributions to this collection have already appeared else- where only heightens skepticism. Seven of the nineteen essays were either published as articles, condensed from reports to the Commission on Preservation and AccesS (CPA), delivered as papers whose content had already been expanded in a book, or issued as policies by the American Li- brary Association (ALA) or the Society of American Archivists (SAA). They are available from these sources at minimal cost. That said, the present collection is nonetheless a valuable one. Librarians of all sorts have a great need for informa- tion about preservation and access but limited ways of getting it. In their short introduction the editors justify a new an- nual on the grounds that the enormous preservation challenge facing librarians and archivists in the next decades will be characterized by numerous choices and changes and that the series of volumes will serve to share promising strategies, communicate new ideas, and discuss timely issues. The first issue brings together useful information about the background, cur- rent concerns and future directions of the preservation movement. The quality of the contributions is in general quite high. The focus is broad enough and the information solid and up-to-date enough · to enlighten both veterans in and newcom- ers to the field. Indeed, given the general dearth of adequate education about pre- servation in library schools, this volume could well function as a basic text, so well does it cover the central issues from his- tory to future technologies, from brittle books to archives. Most of the contributors to this first collection have long experience and national standing in the field. Their re- ports fall into six sections, each briefly introduced. Eight essays in two sections review the origins of preservation in the nineteenth century and its development into a coordinated movement in the twentieth. Although the essays in this section overlap quite a bit, together the authors assemble from several organiza- tiona! perspectives a satisfying picture of the fruitful collaboration between the Council on Library Resources (CLR), its offspring the Commission on Preserva- tion and Access, whose function as a catalyst Patricia Battin describes, the Asso- ciation of Research Libraries (ARL), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Research Libraries Group (RLG), on whose cooperative microfilming pro- jects Patricia McClung reports. The National Endowment for the Humani- ties' Office of Preservation has helped implement their collaborative projects by funding the national brittle book pro- gram detailed by George Parr. In the section 11 Agendas for Adminis- tration," four essays deal with preserva- tion education, the place of preservation in library organization and budget for- mation, environmental issues, and selec- tion for preservation. Deanna Marcus reviews the CPA's Task Force's work on education and stresses that preservation is an attitude rather than a mere set of skills that will be required for new librar- ians. Paul Fasana and John Baker present issues to be considered when introduc- ing or expanding preservation activi- ties-noting that 11nO area of library organization is untouched by preserva- tion" -and give practical suggestions and bibliographic references for preser- vation planning. In "Options and Opportunities," four articles discuss innovative techniques: mi- crofilming for archives and manuscripts (Janet Gertz), technical considerations in choosing mass deacidification processes (Peter Sparks), digital imaging (Anne Ken- ney and Lynne Personius), and the com- plementarity of preservation and con- servation (Karen Motylewski and Mary Elizabeth Ruwell). The report on the Cornell digital imaging project by Ken- ney and Personius is especially detailed and interesting, for this technology has the potential to redefine preservation for- matting and to revolutionize access to materials and the library's role in provid- ing it. Their balanced approach does not gloss over the drawbacks of this infant technology, which itself has a short shelf life and needs periodic refreshing. They Book Reviews 279 stress, as does Sparks for mass deacidifica- tion, the importance of library involvement in the development of standards and pro- cedures and the need for caution in using new technologies. The relative novelty and special na- ture of preservation concerns for the ar- chival world merit a separate section. It includes R.J. Cox's discussion of the evo- lution of American archivists' under- standing of "preservation" from merely sheltering material from harm to ensur- ing the longevity of their content. Paul Conway presents the Society of Ameri- can Archivists' new national strategy for archival preservation. The final section, 11Progress and Un- met Challenges," is an excellent biblio- graphic overview by Susan Swartzberg and Robert Schnare of preservation pro- grams and issues for the 1990s. Most of the papers are linked together by one or more of the themes articulated in Barbara Higginbotham's introduc- tion. They stress the importance of build- ing on the past and encouraging public awareness in order to secure funding. They review the many faces of coopera- tion without glossing over the conflicts of local and national priorities. They lay out the expanding range of choices avail- able and the factors that determine deci- sions, while maintaining a cautious approach to new technologies, which have preservation problems of their own. The importance of access and its critical link to preservation emerges from a number of the essays, as does the pervasiveness of preservation concerns in every aspect of library operations. The preservation problem has the potential to overwhelm, especially if ar- chival and other nonprint materials are considered. In its variety of approaches to this vast challenge, the collection of essays here offers a valuable vade mecum: librarians and archivists must be willing to explore and pursue all possible preservation avenues, to under- take manageable pieces and partial solu- tions, and to compromise. It remains to be seen whether future volumes in the series can sustain the high quality and interest of this one. For 280 College & Research Libraries one thing, eight of the contributions (one-third of the book's length) concern the history of the preservation move- ment. Will there be enough significant "advances" to fill a volume annually? The series will fulfill its potential for use- fulness only if the editors can get con- tributions from articulate experts and if they can maintain the fine balance be- tween useful practical information and theoretical considerations.-Susanne F. Roberts, Yale University, New Haven, Con- necticut. Electronic Documents. Oxford: Learned Information (U.S. distribution: Med- ford, N.J.: Learned · Information), 1992- . $179 per year for 12 issues of the journal and an accompanying newsletter. (ISSN 0965-2035). Each issue of Electronic Documents re- ports at length on a single subject, and contains briefer articles on other topics. Issues are written by the editor, Peter Hyams, and one or two other authors. They consult the secondary literature (and provide brief bibliographies), but most of the information comes from the vendors' literature and from interviews with both vendors and users. In one issue the edi- tor describes his procedure: "[W]e offer no pretence to test, let alone to recom- mend products. Instead, we . . . learn where [product vendors] 'come from' and whom they aim to please, [and] hear I see what they offer, especially the key features." A review is expected to make a recommendation, but otherwise this does not seem a bad procedure to follow. Despite their similar structure, there was considerable variation among the three issues I examined. Perhaps the most interesting was entitled "Hypertext in Action," an excellent introduction to hypertext for the layperson, well written and illustrated. It conveyed the excitement many people feel about this topic, but also addressed the amount of thought and ef- fort required to produce a product that offers any real advantages over a well- designed "regular" text. The general presentation was accompanied by refer- ences to specific hypertext authoring r. May1993 systems and accounts of hypertext in use. Criteria for choosing hypertext soft- ware were followed by descriptions of some currently available products. A second issue, "Producing CD- ROMs," placed much more emphasis on technical issues, as might be expected, but was also devoted to text preparation and the issues of emerging standards for tagging text (SGML). The third issue, ''Rec- ognizing Characters," contained less ex- planatory material than the others. The outlines of the topic had been covered ear- lier in the year in an issue on ''Reading Typefaces (OCR)," and this issue, after de- scribing some additional user experience, concentrated on descriptions of specific higher volume, more complex, and higher priced systems. Reader surveys have already caused some changes in format and are also used to determine topics to be covered. Recent and coming issues discuss such themes as image capture and handling, workflow, on-demand documents, mul- timedia, document storage and trans- port, and publishing and the networks, a topic that has been neglected in most of the publishing trade journals. The newsletters accompanying each issue draw heavily on announcements from vendors, but significant events from government and research are also noted. The key feature of Electronic Docu- ments is its solid introductions to the is- sues involved in the production of electronic documents. The reader will not understand information theory or be able to take apart a CD server after read- ing an issue, but will be able to evaluate production options. The reader will also know reasons not to put data into hyper- text or on a CD-ROM, but will not know why a given software program should be avoided. · The primary audience for this journal seems to be managers who will be inter- viewing vendors and making decisions about production systems. Librarians and end users of electronic documents can learn a great deal from this journal, not only about techniques but also about the economic decisions publishers are making, but the editors are not aiming at them. This