College and Research Libraries "We are easily seduced by 'good' causes/' he writes, adding that "we are casually pressed into service on behalf of some- one else's priorities," while no one, no one at all, looks out for us. This is the "cruel world" he talks about and which he rubs the noses of his readers in at every turn. We are lulled into passivity, he writes, by the "cheap praise" we attract through the "library profession's perceived role as mendicant," although this earns us "very little political leverage or professional re- spect." He provides stinging examples of our naivete: In "Bailing Out the Pacific Ocean with a Teaspoon/' he recounts that when Hillary Rodham Clinton graced a library conference with her presence and was enthusiastically received, nobody seemed to care that she did not talk about libraries but simply used the platform to recruit our support for her version of health care legislation. We might have offered her a trade by suggesting that in return for our support, she persuade her husband to restore program budgets for libraries. However, we did not. Perhaps librarians would consider such a sugges- tion rude, but it was political deals that passed NAFTA. Later on, in ''Playing Shell Games with- out Any Peas/' he recalls how educators, our presumed allies, composed A Nation at Risk, "an otherwise superb political document that never acknowledged the existence, let alone the importance and role of libraries" in the national educational enterprise. Our only hope lies in the recog- nition that our competitors for public (and tax) support are not in the military or the space program but, instead, are the "other social programs, unpleasant and uncom- fortable as that realization may be: ... the present competition for funding among 'good' things is ferocious and it should suggest to us an insistence on hard-nosed quid pro quos in building alliances." White is an old-school liberal who believes in li- braries but believes that their interests are best served when librarians aggressively represent their own interests, not someone Book Reviews 195 else's and not abstract "good" causes that only serve to distract them from the seri- ous business of survival in a hostile cli- mate. None of this will sound unfamiliar to readers of White's prodigious produc- tion of articles and books. Why, then, purchase this book if most of its contents are easily found in widely held journals amply indexed in Library Literature? Perhaps the greatest single advantage of this compilation is that it brings together White's disparate writ- ings of the past ten to fifteen years, al- lowing us to study White himself-a worthy subject in his own right-and to compare his thought today with that of his earlier "collected works" volume, en- titled (with premature optimism, as the author now recognizes) Librarians and the Awakening from Innocence (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989). In the present political climate, White's style of advocacy often seems as dated as its object, the "profession of librarian- ship" itself. Libraries, and especially li- brary schools, now seek success in the public arena by distancing themselves from traditional notions of libraries and librarianship, not by returning to the core values of the profession that White so vociferously upholds. Depressing com- parisons come to mind while reading this book, not with sleek lobbying SWAT teams such as the NRA but, rather, with the moribund interest groups of orga- nized labor. It is a cold, cruel world out there indeed, and White's brand of librar- ian militancy seems overtaken by events and strangely out of synch with the times. Maybe if we had listened to him years ago, it would not have come to this.-Jef- frey Garrett, Northwestern University, Evan- ston, Illinois. Networked Scholarly Publishing. Ed. F. W. Lancaster. Library Trends 43, no. 4 (spring 1995): 257p. In "The American Scholar," Ralph Waldo Emerson criticized those who balk at the new and untried, but then he sets out the 196 College & Research Libraries dilemma of revolutionary ages, "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." In li- braries and in scholarly coqununication generally, electronic journals hold both the greatest near-term possibility of revo- lution and also pose the most pressing challenge of deciding just what to do with them. Publishers, libraries, and scholars are responding with a variety of models for the electronic journal; some have al- ready proven to be dead ends, but other new models come along with regularity, driven by economic necessity. These ef- forts seek answers in three areas: the tech- nical methods of preparing and deliver- ing electronic journals to users; the struc- tural and financial changes in journal publishing; and the acceptance of elec- tronic journals by users, their willingness to use electronic formats and to make them a part of the system of scholarly communication and reward. All are cov- ered in this issue of Library Trends, though the technical and social aspects get fuller and more varied treatment. The three articles on technical issues are examples of what this collection does best: brief, understandable surveys that prepare librarians to participate in the de- bate. Thomas Hickey discusses the capa- bilities and limitations of three journal formats: simple ASCII text, page images, and structured text (SGML). Both Hickey and his OCLC colleague, Stuart Weibel, who writes on Web applications, believe that marked-up text (SGML and its sub- set HTML) delivered over the Internet is the most likely path for future develop- ment, perhaps complemented by page images of older publications. The article by Maynard Brichford and William Maher on archival questions identifies continued access to information as more important than any physical threats to electronic media. The question of access has a financial and contractual aspect as well: if publishers provide data from serv- ers, they must take responsibility for en- suring continued access to those data. March 1996 Throughout this collection, there is a realistic and refreshing willingness to concede that many technical problems still exist, but also an optimism that time and money will solve them. There is, however, less certainty about the personal and institutional acceptance of electronic publishing. Kenneth Arnold critically sur- veys the theories suggesting that elec- tronic information will transform schol- arly and other communication, and Laura Gasaway provides a lucid exposition of the current state and possible future of copyright, but the bulk of the essays deal with the acceptance of electronic publish- ing by individuals, scholarly disciplines, and institutions. Because I have been vis- iting offices and computer labs on my own campus to evaluate access to elec- tronic information, I was particularly drawn to Ann Bishop's account of her experiences using seven electronic jour- nals, assessing the reader's likely aware- ness of their existence, ease of access, and ease of use. She supplements this by in- terviewing engineering faculty and stu- dents (and gives a URL for those inter- ested in the continuation of her work). Although her experience was with jour- nals delivered via listserv and gopher, methods that are largely being sup- planted by the Web, her approach can serve as a model for the ongoing local surveys that are needed when we make an investment in organizing and deliver- ing electronic information. Here and in other articles, there is agreement that a reader's acceptance of electronic information will vary greatly from discipline to discipline and indi- vidual to individual. Carol Tenopir also asks what is needed for the author to ac- cept electronic publishing. In addition to quicker and more effective distribution of research, academic authors expect that their contributions to electronic publica- tions will receive due consideration when tenure, promotion, and salary decisions are made. Some of the touted speed, com- munication, and financial advantages of electronic publication may not be possible if much of the editorial and peer review apparatus must be retained to accommo- date the academic reward system. Inter- estingly, only Arnold mentions in this context the role of the print journal with an electronic version, as, for example, with Project Muse at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity Press. This seems an attractive transitional vehicle for gaining schol- arly acceptance-available over the In- ternet, but with all the trappings of a traditional journal. Two articles deal specifically with the acceptance of electronic information in the library. Bryce Allen's article on per- sonality types and organizational atti- tudes to change is interesting, but his so- lutions often seem too general. His focus on personality issues neglects institu- tional politics and priorities in areas such as the relationship between the library and the computing center. Gay Dan- nelly's article on resource-sharing cov- ers that topic well, but also goes beyond it to deal briefly with some of the core col- lection development issues such as leas- ing, access fees, and preservation of the historical record. This issue of Library Trends is required reading for anyone who is beginning to grapple with electronic journals, electronic information generally, or the changes in scholarly communication. Most of the es- says attempt to establish the state of the art and lay out the questions rather than solve the problems, so those who already have experience in the field might want to look only for the areas that still trouble them. The one major perspective that is miss- ing in the collection is the publisher's. Many in the library community and some in the scholarly community believe that academe must regain control over its product. Lancaster's survey of the pri- orities of university administrators suggests that the necessary money will not be available in the near future, and it seems probable that we will be deal- Book Reviews 197 ing with commercial publishers, uni- versity presses, and scholarly societies for some time to come. The essay by Donald King and Jose-Marie Griffiths provides useful data on the costs of paper and electronic journals. Publisp- ing is also discussed in passing else- where, but a survey of the ways in which publishers of all kinds are at- tempting to deal with the issues of elec- tronic information would have been ex- tremely usefuL-James Campbell, Univer- sity of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Ostler, Larry J ., Therrin C. Dahlin, and J.D. Willardson. The Closing of Ameri- can Library Schools: Problems and Oppor- tunities. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr., 1995. 158p. $49.95. (ISBN 0-313- 28461-X). The title of this book will get the atten- tion of those especially concerned with education for the profession-and not only our profession-but the content will not hold it for long. This short text con- tains no information on actual library school closings and no attempt at a seri- ous analysis of closings. J.D. Willardson of the College of Education at Brigham Young University (BYU) contributes a twelve-page sketch of historical trends and forces in American higher education. Larry Ostler and Therrin C. Dahlin, librar- ians at BYU and part-time library school instructors (presumably at the now closed BYU library school), contribute sixty pages, briefly discussing the history of library education and the social changes affecting it, the nature of the profession of librarian, the need for strategic plan- ning, and the importance of accreditation for schools and certification for practitio- ners; and then offer a proposal to revamp the system of library education. Their idea is to introduce an undergraduate degree program that would include information and education on basic library operations and philosophy and would teach skills that would prepare students for parapro- fessional work in libraries. After three