reviews


Book Reviews 571 

felt that all versions of a “work” should be 
linked so that if a patron searched one ver­
sion, he or she would automatically find 
all the others available in the catalog. This 
is what we attempt to accomplish through 
the use of uniform titles and other special­
ized catalog entries. Martha M. Yee’s pa­
per addressing these linkages is especially 
interesting and well conceived. She has 
great ideas about how to group informa­
tion in a catalog so that the user can see 
the relationships, and she includes excel­
lent examples to illustrate these ideas. Also 
especially noteworthy are Allyson 
Carlyle’s paper on indexes of search results 
and their organization and Michael 
Carpenter’s paper on the online catalog 
display of searches in which he argues for 
a more Web-type display, employing dif­
ferent fonts, etc., for helping the user see 
the various relationships.

 The last part of the book contains six 
papers on the future of cataloging. I found 
this to be the most enjoyable section of the 
book. The chapters are concise and yet 
packed with information. Although one 
does not find the answers to the catalog­
ing problems of the future here, one does 
find many thought-provoking discussions 
on the future of cataloging. Topics covered 

Index to advertisers 
ACRL 544, 565, 566 
AIAA 480, 545 
Archival Products 489 
CHOICE 565, 573 
EBSCO cover 4 
Elsevier Science 493, 495, 497 
Endocrine Society 554 
Faxon/Rowecom 490 
Getty Trust 574 
Greenwood Publishing 499 
Grove’s Dictionaries cover 3 
Lexis-Nexis 479 
Library Technologies 483 
M. Moleiro 509 
OCLC 485 
PNAS 535 
Primary Source Microfilm cover 2 
Salem Press 534 
Theatre Research Data Group 524 

include: putting the URLs in the authority 
file; providing access to “virtual collec­
tions”; providing a subject structure to the 
Web; and revising AACR2. The paper by 
Maurice J. Freedman on the philosophy of 
cataloging was especially insightful and 
clearly written. John D. Byrum Jr’s paper, 
which offers some important thoughts on 
certain cataloging rules that should be re­
vised, and Marcia J. Bates’s paper on the 
Web were especially stimulating, and both 
included many pertinent examples.

 Overall, I was quite pleased with this 
book. I found it to be well conceived, 
clearly written, and thought provoking. 
In fact, I was musing over the concepts 
so much that I even found myself asking 
my friends questions as we lay together 
on the beach. “How would you want an 
index of a famous author ordered?” 
“Should the catalog display the author’s 
name as an added entry differently from 
his name as a main entry in the index?” 
Reading this book really made me aware 
of the philosophical underpinnings of 
many cataloging concepts and made me 
question some of the cataloging rules that 
I have always just accepted. It made me 
question and it made me think, and that’s 
always good.

 I’m going back to the beach later this 
summer. I’ll probably bring a novel this 
time. I just hope it’s as thought provok­
ing as this book.—Isabel del Carmen 
Quintana, Harvard University. 

Hannah, Stan A., and Michael H. Har-
ris. Inventing the Future: Information 
Services for a New Millennium. Stam­
ford, Conn.: Ablex, 1999. 170p. $54.50 
cloth (ISBN 1-56750-450-7); $24.95 pa­
per (ISBN 1-56750-451-5). LC99-28306. 

Inventing the Future, sequel to Into the Fu-
ture by the same authors, is a compact 
book that reads as a call to arms for li­
brarians—who wish to stay relevant—to 
change the way they approach their work. 
The authors offer no “utopian fantasies”; 
instead, they assume a world where print 
and paper will exist but argue that infor­
mation technology will be the core tech­
nology in the library’s future. The authors 



572 College & Research Libraries 

reason that the most important question 
before us is the one that asks what we are 
to do with this technology. They find the 
answer in a work environment that is a 
learning organization. The book is highly 
readable (with wonderful chapter-head 
quotations), and it pulls no punches when 
it describes what librarians need to do to 
survive.

 In the early chapters, they build a case 
for why we must change our ways: Li­
brarians do not evaluate services; we lack 
a user focus and do not understand (nor 
care) how people use libraries; we believe 
too often that size determines quality; we 
engage only in incremental change and 
ignore long-range planning; and we do 
not address the issue of library nonuse 
by faculty and graduate students. Many 
of these critiques ring true, though some 
are too sweeping, which is not surpris­
ing given the nature of this work. It suc­
ceeds in being thought provoking and 
provides an easy segue into the chapters 
that discuss how we can find our way into 
the future.

 Libraries’ future, the authors argue, is 
dependent on them becoming learning 
organizations, not knowing organiza­
tions. Knowing organizations know there 
is only one way to get something done, 
but this is not the case with the learning 
organization. For my money, one of the 
beauties of this book is that it is able to 
put into crisp, clear language the philoso­
phy of the learning organization, and es­
pecially the ideas of Peter Senge. The need 
for a vision and the need to integrate that 
vision with strategy, values, and culture 
are fleshed out. Use appendices are in­
cluded.

 Perhaps the book’s most powerful sec­
tions are those that revisit some of the cri­
tiques made upon librarians, such as our 
attachment to the MARC record and 
LCSH, the fact that we index citations and 
not ideas and that our OPACs are gener­
ally poorly designed. Parallels are drawn 
to recent technologies (such as the Web) 
to show the direction in which we should 
be headed. Though the sections on search­
ing the Web are perhaps not critical 

November 2000 

enough, they point out that Web search 
engines have improved and that people 
enjoy using them; there is much we can 
learn from them. Librarians must begin 
to deliver added value, rethink our access 
tools, develop intelligent databases, and 
redesign our organizations.

 For libraries starting to deal with 
change, this book is required reading. It 
champions the learning library and in so 
doing provides a pithy introduction to 
that philosophy enhanced by the inclu­
sion of specific examples (although it may 
be too basic for librarians already on the 
road toward the learning library). The 
book’s other strong feature is that it raises 
issues that librarians might not be com­
fortable addressing. The authors argue 
that we must face these issues or face the 
consequences.—Ed Tallent, Boston College. 

Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual 
Property in a Postmodern World. Eds. 
Lise Buranen and Alice M. Roy, Fore­
word by Andrea Lunsford. Albany, 
N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Pr., 1999. 
302p. $71.50 cloth (ISBN 0791440996); 
$23.95 paper (ISBN 079144080X). LC 
99-11407. 

It would appear that plagiarism is cur­
rently something of a growth industry; 
as access to electronic databases, 
convention-flaunting ‘zines on the Web, 
and academic writing centers have been 
added to older opportunities such as 
“term paper mills,” fraternity houses’ 
caches of previously submitted papers, 
and “research assistance” providers. 
These changes have attracted an increas­
ing amount of attention recently from in­
terested commentators. Of the two dozen 
contributions presented in this volume, 
most have been prepared by academics 
who either are faculty members in En­
glish departments or administer colle­
giate “writing centers.” A copyright law­
yer, an editor, and scholars from other 
disciplines also contributed their perspec­
tives. Likewise, there are a variety of ana­
lytical approaches to examining the phe­
nomenon: a content analysis of writing 
instruction textbooks, historical studies of