reviews 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 academic misbehavior in American col­ leges, surveys of policy statements ori­ ented toward students, case studies, and what might be seen as a law review ar­ ticle. The book is divided into two nearly equal sections. The first section attempts to define plagiarism, a difficult task be­ cause the meaning of the term has changed and will likely continue to change over time depending on varying sociopolitical, legal, and philosophical viewpoints. Whether it is a property crime, the result of faulty instruction, or an academic “sin” is examined in Laurie Stearns’s excellent chapter. Gilbert Larochelle traces the nature of author­ ship/ownership from Kant’s notion that an individual creates something that has both intellectual and economic value through Foucault’s deconstructionist view that authorship hardly exists at all, in the traditional sense, and that what­ ever the method of coming into being, all one can say about a work is that it exists, Book Reviews 573 with its meaning and value not subject to determination. Marilyn Randall’s chap­ ter, “Imperial Plagiarism,” draws paral­ lels between the appropriation of ideas and colonialism. Overall, these thirteen chapters present the complexity of the problem of definition. The second half of the book, titled “Applications,” deals with the practical problems encountered by teachers, the limits of acceptable guidance in campus “writing centers,” and the reasonable punishment of students for ill-defined, but generally understood as inappropri­ ate, academic behaviors. The results of several surveys indicate that there is a great variety in what and how students are told about what they are responsible for, the methods of dealing with alleged infractions, and the consequences for proven cases of plagiarism. Unfortu­ nately, there is no set of “best practices” that might serve as a model for the rest of us to follow.—Charles Wm. Conaway, Florida State University.