reviews


288 College & Research Libraries May 1998 

proposal: The best way to do content de­
scription would be to describe informa­
tive potentials. In that form, it clearly par­
allels the proposal, which has been 
around for years, to describe content by 
predicting subjective utilities of docu­
ments (which the author oddly does not 
discuss, though it obviously provides 
another striking case of subjectivism to 
be opposed by methodological collectiv­
ism.) In that form, of course, it is subject 
to the objection that prediction of future 
epistemological or informative potentials 
is bound to be excruciatingly difficult, 
made all the more so by the author’s in­
sistence on long-range as opposed to 
short-range utilities (he rejects “short­
term pragmatism,” which he blames on 
William James). And it is oddly optimis­
tic to suppose that many documents now 
produced actually have any future util­
ity or informational value for solving fu­
ture scientific problems. So Hjørland’s 
proposal faces very serious challenges. 
Despite this, however, it is a major pro­
posal, an addition to the small repertory 
of serious alternative approaches to con­
tent description, and deserves to be re­
flected on and worked over carefully by 
others. 

Some of the other proposals, such as 
the advocacy of domain analysis, are less 
controversial. Every good subject special­
ist in a research library practices an in­
formal kind of domain analysis simply 
by accumulating knowledge of the bibli­
ography of a field, of its literature patterns 
and types, its intellectual leaders and cen­
ters of activity, and the like. Many of 
Hjørland’s proposals will sound intu­
itively plausible to the subject specialist. 
The emphasis on the philosophically 
pragmatic foundation of the proposals 
probably will seem attractive as well; ac­
tivity theory is not described in enough 
detail to provide really solid backing, and 
in effect is treated as a Russian version of 
John Dewey’s approach. The whole di­
rection of this work will make sense to 
those familiar with the literature on the 

sociology of knowledge and, in particu­
lar, the sociology of scientific knowledge 
and of social epistemology. 

However, a big question remains. 
Hjørland starts by proposing that infor­
mation seeking is the key problem for in­
formation science but then concentrates 
exclusively on literature searching by re­
search workers. What about information 
seeking by others? What about informa­
tion seeking that does not take the form 
of literature search? As one works 
through this book, it appears that the au­
thor really does think that information 
science has as its subject matter prima­
rily, or exclusively, the research use of lit­
erature. The study of information use by 
others is apparently to be left to others— 
for example, students of the mass media. 
This seems a quite unnecessary limitation 
on the scope of information science, for 
which the author presents no convincing 
argument. We should ignore this limita­
tion, but we should welcome method­
ological collectivism and apply it widely 
to the study of knowledge and of infor­
mation production, distribution, and uti­
lization.—Patrick Wilson, University of 
California-Berkeley. 

Outsourcing Library Technical Services Op­
erations: Practices in Academic, Public, 
and Special Libraries. Eds. Karen A. Wil­
son and Marylou Colver. Chicago: 
ALA, 1997. 239p. $38 ($34.20 ALA 
members) (ISBN 0-8389-0703-2). LC 
97-22901. 

Published by ALA, this volume was is­
sued under the sponsorship of the Asso­
ciation for Library Collections and Tech­
nical Services’s Commercial Technical 
Services Committee whose members in 
1995 “. . . were aware of the lack of pub­
lished case studies on technical services 
outsourcing in the 1990s. . . . This book 
was conceived to provide readers with 
greater insight on the managerial aspects 
of outsourcing, based on a variety of suc­
cessful experiences in different kinds of 
library settings.” The introduction and 



Book Reviews 289 

various chapters within the work remind 
us that outsourcing is not a new concept; 
shelf-ready book services have existed 
since the 1950s and blanket order plans 
have been in widespread use since the 
1960s. The preface states that the recent 
interest “. . . is evidenced by the fact that 
over 90 articles on various aspects of tech­
nical services outsourcing appeared in li­
brary literature from 1993 to mid-1996, 
preceded by almost no information on 
this activity during the two previous de­
cades.” Nowhere is mention made that 
the outpouring of current literature fol­
lowed Wright State University’s decision 
to outsource its entire cataloging opera­
tion. Although this is not a flaw per se, 
failure to mention the controversy that 
surrounds outsourcing within the profes­
sion ignores important context. 

Despite its subtitle, the bulk of the 
work, eleven of sixteen chapters, is com­
posed of reports from academic libraries. 
Three chapters describe public library 
ventures, and two discuss cases from spe­
cial libraries. The nature and scope of the 
projects described are as eclectic as the 
institutions from which they emanate, 
although the majority are concerned with 
the outsourcing of cataloging and cata­
loging-related activity. The smallest op­
eration reported on was that of Central 
Oregon Community College Library, 
where the fewer than fifty items per year 
that require original cataloging are 
outsourced. Claremont Colleges have 
outsourced the copy cataloging of ap­
proval books from Yankee Book Peddler 
to OCLC TechPro since 1994; and the Uni­
versity of Arizona began to outsource the 
copy cataloging, item record creation, and 
physical processing of its approval books 
from Blackwell North America in 1996. 
North of the border, the University of 
Alberta has outsourced the cataloging 
and physical processing of most newly 
acquired monographs since 1995, 
whereas the University of Manitoba 
started to outsource copy cataloging and 
the physical processing of monographs 

in 1994 and expanded its contract to in­
clude original cataloging in 1996. Both of 
the Canadian schools employ ISM/LTS 
(information systems management/li­
brary technical services). The University 
of California-Santa Barbara and Emory 
University used outsourcing for retro­
spective authority control and continue 
to use it for current authority control. 
Florida Atlantic University has used 
OCLC TechPro to catalog music scores 
and foreign language materials which 
otherwise would have remained in a 
backlog. 

The Fort Worth Public Library uses five 
different vendors for its various 
outsourcing operations. Outsourced ac­
tivities include copy cataloging and 
physical processing as well as selection, 
cataloging, and physical processing for all 
best-sellers and children’s books. The 
Houston Public Library outsources physi­
cal processing, copy cataloging, and au­
thority control. Baker & Taylor, Inc., has 
supplied shelf-ready books for three new 
branches (each with collections of around 
35,000 volumes) of the Albuquerque/ 
Bernalillo County Public Library System. 

An interesting exception to the case 
studies on cataloging was the description 
of the outsourcing of document delivery 
and table of contents service by Stanford 
University’s Graduate School of Business 
Library. Also of interest were two reports 
from institutions that chose alternatives 
to outsourcing. At the University of Ne­
braska-Lincoln, staff were given the op­
tion to be hired for overtime work to pro­
cess a special collection. The Indiana His­
torical Society hired a retired employee 
for part-time work instead of outsourcing 
a job. In both instances, the projects were 
finite and the use of staff who were fa­
miliar with institutional procedures was 
judged to be advantageous. 

Certain common themes emerged in 
the case studies reported. The most fre­
quent reason stated for outsourcing was 
the need to maintain or expand services 
with no increase in monies. Several writers 



 

290 College & Research Libraries May 1998 

mentioned that staff were reassigned 
from technical to public service positions 
as a result of outsourcing. Everyone indi­
cated the need for careful planning in ad­
vance and for periodic evaluations. In 
gauging the success of outsourced work, 
several authors granted that no figures 
existed for making certain comparisons. 
A surprising number of institutions lack 
data on cataloging error rates, turnaround 
time from order to shelf for new acquisi­
tions, and so on. 

More appendices outlining contract 
specifications would have strengthened 
the case studies and provided potential 
assistance to those who are anticipating 
the outsourcing of some operations. The 
book was intended to present case stud­
ies of successful outsourcing, however; 
and this purpose was fulfilled. The text 
proper is followed by an annotated bibli­
ography. Included are almost 125 citations 
to materials that present both the nega­
tive and positive aspects of outsourcing. 
Anyone with an interest in the subject will 
find this work a useful addition to the lit-
erature.—James W. Williams, University of 
Illinois-Urbana. 

Radway, Janice A. A Feeling for Books: The 
Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, 
and Middle-Class Desire. Chapel Hill: 
Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1997. 424p. 
alk. paper, $29.95 (ISBN 0-8078-2357-0). 
LC 96-52037. 

Janice A. Radways’s first book, Reading 
the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popu­
lar Literature, dared to take seriously one 
of the most despised genres of mass fic­
tion and to listen to the voices of real read­
ers. Those were the days when popular 
culture was still unmentionable in many 
English departments. In this new project, 
Radway tackles a tamer, but more am­
biguous, subject: the Book of the Month 
Club and the middlebrow culture it both 
reflected and promoted. She seems deter­
mined to repeat her earlier triumphant 
vindication of reading matter scorned by 
highbrow critics. But times have changed 

since 1984. Attacking the modernist 
canon, validating the reader’s desires, in­
terpreting the economic, social, and psy­
chological meanings of cultural texts—all 
this is old hat today. Radway acknowl­
edges her uncertainty about what she 
herself describes as a work of self-discov­
ery whose focus “oscillates continually 
between critique and appreciation.” 

A Feeling for Books consists of three sec­
tions, each with a distinctive subject mat­
ter and methodology. It begins with a field 
study of the Book of the Month Club or­
ganization that Radway undertook in 
1985 as part of an “ethnographic” study 
of reading. She recounts her impressions 
of the club’s editors as they responded to 
a takeover by Time Incorporated. The sec­
ond and longest section uses a more de­
tached, scholarly approach to survey the 
history of publishing in the nineteenth 
and twentieth centuries, the rise of the 
Book of the Month Club, and responses 
to it. In conclusion, Radway offers per­
sonal interpretations of several club titles 
she read as a fourteen year old: Marjorie 
Morningstar; Gods, Graves, and Scholars; 
and To Kill a Mockingbird. 

When the well-read advertising man 
Harry Scherman launched the Book of the 
Month Club in 1926, he knew exactly 
what he was doing. He applied modern 
techniques of marketing and distribution 
to bookselling to “sell new books as an 
identifiable category with recognizable 
uses for potential buyers.” The books 
were selected by a carefully chosen panel 
of judges who were presented as both 
experts and generalists. The ingenious 
“negative option,” which allowed read­
ers to reject a book, enabled the club to 
maintain an illusion of freedom and in­
dividuality. (The irrepressible Scherman 
described readers’ rejection of a chosen 
title thus: “The country didn’t want The 
Heart of Emerson’s Journals; they didn’t 
want any part of Emerson’s journals.”) 
The number of subscribers quickly stabi­
lized at a million. By the 1950s, the club 
had become a cultural icon, subject of an