reviews


 

Book Reviews 197 

Ulysses S. Ricard Jr. detailed the suc­
cesses of Creole blacks in Louisiana, 
slave and free; of the latter, he main­
tained that their “accomplishments in 
military, economic, literary, and artistic 
endeavors were not matched by any 
other free blacks in the United States.” 
Ricard expressed the hope that the ar­
chives he worked with at the Amistad 
Research Center “can be used, directly 
and indirectly, to combat racism and 
prejudice.” 

Like all the participants in the Louisi­
ana meeting, Marcia Gaudet grew up in 
the culture she discusses, in her case 
that of the Cajun culture, whose history 
she outlines and describes as being a 
diverse group defying “one-dimen­
sional” stereotypes. She recognizes, but 
has difficulty in working through, the 
complexities of folk traditions being re­
vived in the flare of media attention and 
local promotion; her example is the 
Cajun Mardi Gras. She quotes folklorist 
Barry Ancelet’s view that the colorful 
masked ritual really “invert[s] reality 
and mock[s] the observer.” Gaudet in­
dicates that documentary material and 
folklore studies are essential in moving 
to a multidimensional understanding. 
The striking photographs of the Cajun 
Mardi Gras by Irby Gaudet III, repro­
duced in the book, are eloquent docu­
ments of a tradition continuing to evolve 
in the 1990s. Another very direct expres­
sion is Irvan Perez’s actual singing of 
Decimas, the old and new topical and lyric 
songs of the Spanish-speaking south 
Louisiana Isleños community in which 
he grew up. Preceded by a brief history 
of his culture, the songs are the real 
heart of Perez’s presentation. 

Probably due to the necessarily lim­
ited focus of the meetings that produced 
the papers here published, some impor­
tant topics are not dealt with: folk mate­
rial culture and visual art (these are usu­
ally in the domain of museums rather 
than libraries and archives); new modes 
of documentation such as self-docu­

mentation of families, groups, cultures, 
through video; and the computer revo­
lution as it documents and proliferates 
information about previously localized 
cultures (e.g., Georgia’s McIntosh 
County Shouters, practitioners of the 
coastal slave ring-shout tradition, now 
have their own Web site). If new con­
ferences and publications covering 
these topics are as insightful and well 
edited as this one, they will be doing a 
great service to the library and 
archiving profession, the general pub­
lic, and especially the groups whose his­
tories and cultures need to be both pre­
served and better understood.—Art 
Rosenbaum, University of Georgia, Athens. 

Eshelman, William R. No Silence!: A Li­
brary Life. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 
1997. 340p. $59 alk. paper (ISBN 0­
8108-3241-0). LC 96-53095. 

My old friend Eshelman’s memoir works 
best if you read it the way it appears 
that he wrote it, back and forth in time 
and picking and choosing events and 
places to build emphases and relation­
ships for yourself. It may be that age 
and experience, plus an ample dose of 
the “library press” as practiced by him, 
Eric Moon, Kathleen Molz, Art Plotnik, 
Gerry Shields, and others is a prerequi­
site for full understanding. Hold on, 
though, this is no Portrait of the Artist as 
a Young Man, it is primary source mate­
rial in library history, and you have to 
mine it to get the ore. I did not begin at 
the beginning, although that early life 
and the hardships of a pacifist, consci­
entious objector in World War II gives 
the reader perspective on the rest of 
the story. 

I looked for material that would en­
rich my own memory and understand­
ing of all that has happened. I wanted to 
smelt and refine out the metal of some 
professional and personal history I had 
lived. I wanted to test some sympathetic, 
but not identical, perspectives from a 
point of view with which I agree, against 



 

 

198 College & Research Libraries March 1996 

my own memories of what I think was a 
period of incredible change in our field 
and our society.

 I got what I wanted from 
Eshelman—and more. It was more in­
teresting and more accessible than 
other memoirs with which I have 
struggled. Indeed, this one was fun. I 
again was exhilarated by the battles: for 
racially integrated libraries and library 
service (there were still segregated li­
braries in our lifetime!), for a more open 
and democratic ALA, for principle tem­
pered and hardened by ideological unity. 
I found the victories and defeats, plus a 
more mellow Bill Eshelman, still stand­
ing firm, still cranky, and still perturbed, 
still seeing every event of a lifetime 
through the lens of his stalwart, un­
swerving adherence to a humane paci­
fism and progressive politics, but it is a 
quieter, more circumspect view than I 
expected. 

Insights are abundant. Get the true 
inside view of the struggle of academic 
libraries, those institutions within insti­
tutions, to deal with campus activism, 
dissent, and downright revolutionary 
upheaval in the now revised-beyond­
recognition 1960s. Review that earlier 
struggle between the then young turks 
of ALA’s social responsibility movement 
and the older purists of the intellectual 
freedom establishment over that nasty 
piece of work, the ALA film The Speaker. 
Read the story of the decline and tragic 
death of the Wilson Library Bulletin from 
its most angry editor, who was refused 
an editorial page in what may have been 
the worst compromise in his career (it 
was restored for all three of his succes­
sors, but no one knows the rules by 
which they were forced to abide). Then 
ponder the inside look at the workings 
of the H. W. Wilson Company during 
the long period when it was run by be­
nevolent despots. 

Equally revealing are the characters 
when viewed through the old editor’s 
eyes. See the young and mature Bob 

Wedgeworth, the mentors Eric Moon, 
Larry Powell and Bob Vosper. Enjoy, too, 
the friends—from the Drinnons to Ward 
Ritchie to Ben Bagdikian, Zoia Horn, and 
many more. You get a new look, an 
insider’s closeup of many of the people 
who shaped modern librarianship, and 
you can tell the good guys from the bad, 
though sometimes even their absence 
is an obvious comment. 

There is rich historic ore to be mined 
in Eshelman’s memoir. He tells it mod­
estly, albeit with an occasional boast, 
and more quietly than I would have ex­
pected. He tells it truthfully too, and that 
makes the memoir a must read for any 
library historian of the period. Despite 
the shallow review you may have seen 
in the June 15 Library Journal, Eshelman’s 
book deserves a far better critique than 
to be written off as “nostalgic.” It gives 
you a living view of the people and 
events of the last half century of 
librarianship, a period in which, as Eric 
Moon puts it in the work’s foreword, the 
“principles and philosophies of the pro­
fession” were tempered and hardened. 
Eshelman, who was a major participant 
in that work, provides a unique memoir 
of that work, and the people who made 
it happen.—John Berry, Library Journal. 

Kaser, David. The Evolution of the Ameri­
can Academic Library Building. Lanham, 
Md.: Scarecrow, 1997. 208p. $36 alk. 
paper (ISBN 0-8108-3219-4). LC 96­
36032. 

One of the foremost authorities on plan­
ning and building academic libraries has 
provided us with a concise, lucid, and 
well-researched history of the way that 
American academic libraries have 
evolved from the one-room facilities of 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries to the large and complex 
structures characteristic of the twenti­
eth century. In doing so, he offers a use­
ful antidote to the nostalgia for certain 
styles by reminding us why they are 
less practical than contemporary modu­