reviews


 

398 College & Research Libraries 

starting the move-planning process. 
Even with this minor omission, 

Habich’s book is essential reading for the 
staff of any academic library that might 
move into whole new quarters, an addi­
tion, or renovation in the foreseeable fu­
ture. Those who follow Habich’s planning 
and implementation guidelines will save 
time, stress, and money. I wish I had had 
this volume at my disposal several years 
ago. I strongly recommend it. —Diane J. 
Graves, Hollins University. 

The Knowledge Economy. Ed. Dale Neef. 
Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann (Re­
sources for the Knowledge-Based 
Economy), 1998. 278p. $21.95, alk. pa­
per (ISBN 0750699361). LC 97-34241. 

Most readers of College & Research Librar­
ies are keenly aware of the impact of 
changes in the global infosphere on our 
own institutions. Every workday, we deal 
with new developments in information 
technology and cope with the limitations 
of our budgets as we labor to provide in­
formation better, faster, and cheaper to 
those on whose behalf we work. Keep­
ing on top of these continuing changes is 
a challenge that may fully occupy us, 
leaving us with no leisure time to explore 
the even wider implications of the 
“knowledge revolution.” Dale Neef has 
provided a partial remedy to this situa­
tion with the publication of this selection 
of readings on the political economy of 
knowledge. Just as economic wealth has 
begun to be measured in terms of intel­
lectual capital instead of tangible re­
sources, Neef (of Ernst & Young’s Center 
for Business Innovation) has assembled 
a collection of readings from a variety of 
sources and points of view. Some of the 
sixteen contributions are authored by 
people whose names are familiar, such as 
Peter F. Drucker, Robert B. Reich, Lester 
C. Thurow, and Hedrick Smith; others are 
probably less well known. With the ex­
ception of his excellent introductory es­
say, all the items have been previously 
published, but only recently—sometimes 
as chapters in books, as journal articles, 
or in less broadly circulated papers of the 

July 1999 

Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development (OECD). 

The essays are organized into five 
broad areas: The Changing Economic 
Landscape; Knowledge as the Economic 
Force of Growth and Change; Measuring 
and Managing the Intangibles of Knowl­
edge; Learning Organizations in the Glo­
bal Knowledge-Based Economy and So­
ciety; and Public Policy: Government, 
Education, and Training in the Knowl­
edge-Based Economy. The most striking 
revelation is the subtle, but escalating, 
shift in the relative importance of univer­
sities, in their traditional roles, to busi­
ness, which is seen to be taking a more 
direct and directive place in the transmis­
sion of information and economically pro­
ductive technical skills. A comparative 
study of secondary education in Japan 
and Germany to the failing system in the 
United States should be of special concern 
to college and university library admin­
istrators. “Partnerships” between busi­
nesses and research universities result in 
our becoming dependent on nongovern­
mental funding and the subsequent 
privatization of information that would, 
in an earlier time, have been placed in the 
public domain. The commercialization of 
educational services once regarded as the 
intellectual property of their creators, but 
now coming to be regarded as “works 
made for hire,” and similar changes in the 
making are reshaping the nature of higher 
education. In conclusion, this may not be 
an easy book to read, but it is a necessary 
one. —Charles Wm. Conaway, Florida State 
University. 

Nolan, Christopher W. Managing the Ref­
erence Collection. Chicago: ALA, 1999. 
231p. $30, acid-free paper (ISBN 0­
8389-0748-2). LC 98-037178. 

If your reference collection is typical, it 
harbors a lot of deadwood. Studies have 
shown that more than half of reference 
materials see no use in any one-year pe­
riod, and one-fourth of the collection will 
not be used over a five-year span. Man­
aging the Reference Collection will be a valu­
able resource for helping you to transform 



 

Book Reviews 399 

a collection burdened with the clutter of 
old, unused sources into an efficient col­
lection based on user needs. 

In this book, Christopher W. Nolan, 
Head of Reference at Trinity University 
(San Antonio), expands on concepts pre­
viously presented in his article “The Lean 
Reference Collection: Improving Func­
tionality through Selection and Weeding” 
(College & Research Libraries 52, no. 1 [Jan. 
1991]: 80–92). 

Neither a library science textbook nor 
a guide to reference sources, Managing the 
Reference Collection provides reference se­
lectors in academic, public, and school li­
braries with practical advice on reference 
selection and maintenance. 

Seven chapters cover reference collec­
tion fundamentals, reference collection 
development policies, selectors for the 
reference collection, selection principles, 
selection of electronic resources, practical 
procedures (acquisition, evaluation, 
weeding, location, routine maintenance), 
and collection management for a lean 
budget. Each chapter concludes with a 
notes section, which augments the se­
lected bibliography at the end of the work. 
This generously annotated list of sixty-
seven print and electronic sources on ref­
erence collection management, dating 
from 1977 to 1998 (with most from the 
1990s), includes those resources most use­
ful to Nolan in his reference collection 
management work. The volume con­
cludes with an index. 

Nolan challenges the idea of pulling 
large numbers of books out of their refer­
ence sequence for maximum-security de­
tention in ready reference collections be­
hind the reference desk, and explains the 
problems that such collections create. He 
gives the example of a ready reference 
collection of more than 200 titles that were 
relocated to the main reference stacks and 
brought back only with justification; a 
mere thirty-four of the 200 titles returned. 
Nolan urges reference selectors to main­
tain lean and mean reference collections, 
remove deadwood from the stacks, and 
refrain from using valuable reference real 
estate as reserve stacks (for books that 

might wander otherwise). Observing that 
reference collections are the gateway to 
the rest of the library, Nolan holds that 
reference collections should contain 
sources that are reference-formatted, fre­
quently used, authoritative, current, and 
unique in coverage. He urges librarians 
to implement collection development 
policies for reference collections and of­
fers practical advice on the elements of 
such a policy. 

Nolan examines the various staffing 
models used for those responsible for se­
lection of reference works: subject bibli­
ographers who do not work at reference, 
reference librarians, technical services li­
brarians, and so on. He also describes the 
strengths and weaknesses inherent in 
each model. 

The chapter on selection principles 
elaborates on the criteria of scope, com­
prehensiveness, audience, documenta­
tion, design, indexing, bibliography, illus­
trations, durability, format, and cost. It 
also examines selection criteria for par­
ticular types of materials, such as subject 
encyclopedias, handbooks, and indexes 
and abstracts. The chapter on selection of 
electronic resources describes in detail 
evaluation criteria such as contents, in­
terface, output features, hardware, soft­
ware, costs, and vendor/publisher issues. 

The author includes practical tips on 
what to do with old periodical index vol­
umes; how to stretch the reference budget 
for books, serials, and electronic resources; 
and how to integrate the World Wide Web 
into the reference collection. The book also 
contains several useful figures: a decision 
tree for selecting reference sources, a se­
lection checklist for electronic resources, 
and a page from Trinity University’s refer­
ence serials/pseudoserials tickler file (a list 
of sources, dates of last purchase, and re­
order dates). 

Especially timely, Managing the Refer­
ence Collection gives reference library prac­
titioners, both new and seasoned, useful 
criteria for creating and implementing 
reference collection development policies 
and procedures, selecting and managing 
print and electronic reference sources, and 



 

400 College & Research Libraries 

evaluating and weeding reference collec­
tions. —J. Christina Smith, Boston Univer­
sity.

 Watson-Boone, Rebecca. How Library and 
Information Science Research Literature 
Describes Librarians: A Synthesis of Se­
lected 1985–1995 Articles. Mequon, 
Wisc.: Center for the Study of Infor­
mation Professionals, Inc. (CSIP Occa­
sional Papers, no. 1), 1998. 33p. $8.98, 
paper (ISSN 1520-8400). 

The image of practicing librarians, from 
all types of libraries in the United States, 
has frequently been the focus of research 
in the library and information science 
(LIS) literature. Who were the authors of 
these research papers? What topics have 
been studied? What will be possible fu­
ture research agendas? Readers should 
expect to have these questions answered 
by this occasional paper published by the 
Center for the Study of Information Pro­
fessionals, Inc. (CSIP). 

The mission of the center is to enlarge 
the body of knowledge that describes and 
defines those individuals whose work is 
focused on generating, selecting, organiz­
ing, preserving, evaluating, disseminat­
ing, and using information in service to 
others. In this publication, the first of the 
CSIP Occasional Papers, Watson-Boone 
presents interesting insights on how the 
LIS literature describes librarians. It syn­
thesizes some of the research on this topic, 
as published in fourteen LIS research jour-

Index to advertisers 
Amer. Chemical Society cover 3 
Biosis 307 
Blackwell’s Book Services 304 
Bowker 363 
Capstone Publishing 371 
CHOICE 396 
EBSCO cover 4 
Gale Group 350-351 
Greenwood Publishing 299 
Harvey Miller Publishers 349 
Library Technologies 300 
OCLC cover 2 
Theatre Research Data Group 384 

July 1999 

nals between 1985 and 1995. This paper 
is a rather small publication—only thirty-
three pages, including a fourteen-page 
bibliography. 

To qualify for inclusion in this study, 
journal articles had to: (1) be full length 
or in a column devoted to research, (2) 
focus on librarians as the major partici­
pants with regard to the study topic, and 
(3) contain findings of a research study. 
Of the 4,476 articles in the fourteen jour­
nals, systematic review of each article 
identified 343 (7.66%) as appropriate for 
inclusion in this study. However, this pa­
per drew on a sample of only 165 (48.1%) 
of the 343 qualified studies. Among the 
selected journals, College & Research Li­
braries had the largest number of quali­
fied studies. 

Watson-Boone concentrates on the 
types of research methods used, author­
ship, and topics studied. She discovered 
that the authors of the studies/articles 
used mail surveys with questionnaires 
more than any other research method. 
Practitioners were authors of 41 percent 
of the studies, LIS faculty of 41 percent, 
other researchers of 9 percent, and prac­
titioners and LIS faculty were coauthors 
of 9 percent. Librarian studies by practi­
tioners appear most frequently in ALA 
divisional journals and in Special Librar­
ies, the official publication of the Special 
Libraries Association, while LIS faculty 
articles were more likely to appear in their 
own professional association journal, the 
Journal of Education for Library and Infor­
mation Science. 

Topics studied clustered into four 
broad categories: demographics, employ-
ment–positions–jobs, attitudes and be­
haviors, and institutions. “Demograph­
ics” treats librarians as a population in 
terms of age, family background, and 
educational attainment. The current av­
erage age of librarians would appear to 
be 41. The majority of female librarians 
do marry and most raise children. Aca­
demic librarians and school media spe­
cialists are most apt to have second gradu­
ate degrees. Increasingly, academic librar­
ians who become directors of major re­