reviews


Book Reviews  379

 

 

 

 

Book Reviews 

Cox, Richard J. Closing an Era: Historical 
Perspectives on Modern Archives and 
Records Management. Westport, Conn.: 
Greenwood Pr. (New Directions in Infor­
mation Management, no. 35), 2000. 252p. 
$65, alk. paper (ISBN 0-313-31331-8). LC 
99-089071. 

In this age of “information as you need 
it” and virtual communities created in the 
changing landscape of the Internet, archi­
vists and records managers concern for 
the record and its long-term preservation, 
may seem passé. To the public, the records 
manager and the archivist are imagined 
operating in dusty basements with boxes 
of old papers, useful only to the academic 
scholar or the genealogist. Richard Cox, 
in his book Closing an Era: Historical Per­
spectives on Modern Archives and Records 
Management, presents a compelling case 
for the profession through a historical 
recounting of the role of records in soci­
ety and the development of efforts to 
manage them.

 Whether in the form of a digital ex­
pression or a stone tablet, the record, as 
Cox explains, should be preserved for 
reasons of accountability, evidence, and 
memory. Although advances in technol­
ogy and communications have collapsed 
time and place and have certainly caused 
changes in work methods, the essence of 
the archivist’s and records manager ’s 
work is still based on this historical foun­
dation.

 Beginning with a historical survey, 
Cox explores the changes brought about 
in society and in the archivist’s profession 
as a result of the digital age. He examines 
recent issues related to records manage­
ment and archives, such as the court con­
troversy over White House e-mail and 
what is and is not to be considered a 
“record.” Cox also reviews the argument 
between documentary editors and propo­
nents of electronic records management 
that resulted from the National Histori­

cal Publications and Records 
Commission’s (NHPRC) setting 
of funding priorities. He la­
ments that the profession is 
splintering into archivists and 
records managers rather than 
working together as records 
professionals. Finally, Cox describes edu­
cational programs for the archivist and 
discusses his views on what should be the 
best education for the archivist and the 
records manager. 

Closing an Era is a carefully docu­
mented review of the historical founda­
tions of the archival profession and an 
exploration of the changes occurring in 
the profession as the result of electronic 
records and communication through the 
Internet. It will be an extremely useful text 
for introducing students to the history 
and theoretical basis of the profession as 
well as to the current issues involved in 
working in a digital environment. Unfor­
tunately, the book is printed in a very 
small font with faint print that makes 
reading difficult and the inclusion of ex­
haustive documentation can be tedious 
going, but the ideas presented make read­
ing the book worth the effort.

 Richard Cox is a professor at the Uni­
versity of Pittsburgh’s School of Informa­
tion Science. His teaching experience 
combined with his past work as an archi­
vist and editor of the journal of the Soci­
ety of American Archivists (SAA) gives 
him a broad perspective for understand­
ing the profession. With this book, Cox 
has made a significant contribution to the 
body of publications focusing on the 
records profession; for archivists, librar­
ians, and records managers, Closing an Era 
is a book worth reading.—Norma Myers, 
East Tennessee State University. 

Kaser, David. Just Lucky, I Guess: My Ad­
venturous Life as a Hoosier Librarian. New 
York: Vantage Pr., 2000. 231p. $13.95, pa­

379 



 

380 College & Research Libraries 

per (ISBN: 0-533-13243-6). LC 99-94965. 
There cannot be many librarians who have 
had a wider range of experience, geo­
graphically and professionally, than David 
Kaser. This memoir is a very readable ac­
count of, first, his years growing up—in 
Indiana, then in the military here, in 
Canada, and in World War Two’s Euro­
pean Theater—and second, the latter half 
of the book, his career in librarianship.

 His library career, which began as a 
student assistant at Houghton College, 
gave way to a few years of graduate work 
in English and then resumed at the Uni­
versity of Michigan’s Library School for 
a Ph.D. in 1956, with a brief interruption 
as serials librarian at Ball State Univer­
sity. His “life’s plan” as a professional— 
to spend twenty years in library opera­
tions and then teach—worked out almost 
perfectly. From 1956 to 1960, he was at 
Washington University, first as acquisi­
tions librarian and then as assistant di­
rector for technical services. From 1960 to 
1968, he served as director of The Joint 
University Libraries (now Vanderbilt 
University), after which he was director 
of Cornell University Libraries (1968– 
1973). He then concluded his academic 
career as a very successful professor at 
Indiana University’s Graduate Library 
School from which he retired in 1991.

 Four years later, he retired from his 
consulting role. He had been doing li­
brary consulting, especially on buildings, 
for many years. By 1995, he had visited 
more than eight hundred colleges and 
universities, worked on some two hun­
dred twenty academic libraries in thirty-
five states and seven foreign countries. 
(Given such experience, there is disap­
pointingly little about the role of a build­
ing consultant.) All of that entailed cross­
ing the Atlantic or Pacific oceans sixty 
times and traveling 646,300 miles by 
plane. Impressive? To be sure, but there 
is more. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 
1967 and by 1999 had published eight 
books; one hundred fifty-four papers, ar­
ticles, or notes; and a hundred forty-six 
book reviews. From 1963 to 1969, he 
served as editor of College &. Research Li-

July 2001 

braries, from 1965 to 1969 and again from 
1975 to 1979 as an ALA Councilor, and in 
1978–1979 as president of ACRL.

 How on earth did he manage all this? 
(And I have omitted a number of other 
professional responsibilities.) One imag­
ines a human dynamo, brimming with 
nervous energy. On the contrary, although 
David is energetic, he is also relaxed, so­
ciable, and invariably in good humor. Was 
he just lucky, as he frequently claims? 
There was a bit of luck, perhaps, but no 
more than most of us have. The answer 
may be gathered from the wholesome up­
bringing recounted in the book’s first half. 
His father and mother, his chores, his 
schooling, his religion, his jobs, and, sur­
prisingly to me, his military experience all 
helped shape his interests, work habits, 
and aspects of his personality. 

All this is related in a personal, at times 
almost folksy, style. (That may excuse the 
lack of an index.) And although the style 
makes the book so readable and David 
so endearing, it does not provide much 
insight into his inner self. It is personal, 
but not at all intimate. One does not ex­
pect the candor or confessions of a Saint 
Augustine or a Marcel Proust, but one 
does miss meaningful reflections. At one 
point, for example, he notes that the army 
was “and still is, a very important influ­
ence on my life,” but how and why is 
never made clear. Or his love of travel. 
He visited many countries, and the visits 
and the persons encountered are interest­
ingly related, but other than satisfying his 
“wanderlust,” which he felt even as a 
youngster, we do not have a sense of what 
those visits meant to him.

 Over the years, I’ve chatted with Dave, 
both socially and professionally, and as 
anyone reading this memoir can infer, he 
is a very modest person with a delightful 
sense of humor, unfailingly upbeat and 
easy to talk with. Although I have long 
admired his writings and his accomplish­
ments, I particularly have been struck by 
the esteem and affection in which he was 
held by his students, not only while he 
was actively teaching, but even since then. 
Is that a result of being “Just lucky?” No, 



 

 

Book Reviews 381 

the title is mistaken. A little bit of luck, 
perhaps, but it was a combination of per­
sonality, intelligence, hard work, and 
character that made him such a success­
ful teacher and permitted him to do all 
the other things he did and did so well. 
Readers of this book who have not known 
David will regret not having met him; 
those who have known him will appreci­
ate him all the more.—Evan Ira Farber, 
Earlham College (Emeritus). 

McMullen, Haynes. American Libraries 
before 1876. Foreword by Kenneth E. 
Carpenter. Westport, Conn.: Green­
wood Pr. (Beta Phi Mu Monograph, no. 
6), 2000. 179p. $62.50, alk. paper (ISBN 
031331277x). LC 99-043164. 

Here is a work of extraordinary effort. 
American Libraries before 1876 presents a 
compilation of descriptive statistics con­
cerning the history of libraries in early 
America. Presumably, this work repre­
sents Haynes McMullen’s lifetime en­
deavor. His interest began early in his 
career when he came across a thirty-page 
publication issued by the U.S. Bureau of 
Education in 1876. It was an extensive 
table identifying American libraries con­
taining at least three hundred volumes. 
By his own confession, the author tells us 
that “many years ago I fell in love with 
[that] table.”

 Over the next fifty years, McMullen 
went on to collect information anteced­
ent to that offered in the table. In Ameri­
can Libraries before 1876, he is careful to 
define his terms and explain his charts 
and graphics, giving readers access to 
detailed information about libraries in the 
colonies, and later in the young republic, 
including their numbers, characteristics, 
founders, and types of collection. Each of 
these categories is treated in a separate 
chapter. At the book’s end, there are a 
useful glossary, a selected bibliography, 
and an index that belies the detail found 
in some one hundred fifty pages of cat­
egorization.

 The statistics are interesting, but the 
book’s organization is not user-friendly; 
would that it had been arranged more 

handily. Although preliminary pages list­
ing illustrations (nineteen tables and six 
figures) and closing appendices might 
make for a quick-reference tool, the tex­
tual presentation is of less certain merit.

 McMullen asks interesting historical 
questions, for example, “Why did 
[Americans] establish so many [librar­
ies]?” His less interesting answers in­
clude: because they wanted them, because 
the colonists were “bookish,” because 
“Benjamin Franklin and his friends set an 
example,” because business was good or 
times were prosperous, but not because 
of density of population. Later, he asks, 
“Why were the new kinds of libraries 
appearing in the years before 1875 … be­
ing established in the older parts of the 
country?” Again, his response is unsatis­
fying. To the latter, he says, “The answer 
is clear: Americans in the older parts … 
continued to introduce new kinds of li­
braries … and people in the newer states 
made little or no contribution to the vari­
ety of libraries that were available.” In­
cluded in the reasons for the popularity 
of the social library is “as fiction increased 
in popularity in the early nineteenth cen­
tury, these libraries became better able to 
meet the emotional needs of their users. In 
most social libraries, novels seems [sic] 
to have made up only a small part of the 
collection; however, some records indi­
cate that fiction circulated heavily” (ital­
ics mine).

 It is this generalized speculation and 
conjecture that leaves the publication 
wanting. Had it been a collection of 
graphs and charts with the current text 
largely in explanatory footnote, the book 
could function well as a reference tool. But 
as a series of unanswered inquiries, it 
might be most useful for library school 
history courses and for doctoral students 
seeking dissertation topics.

 This book clearly involved enormous 
effort, the painstaking collection of data, 
and an undeniable joy in discovery. The 
chapter notes attest to the author’s famil­
iarity with historical scholarship in nu­
merous fields, not the least of which is 
library history. Library schools would do