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84 College & Research Libraries 

Alex Byrne, chairman of IFLA’s com­
mittee on Free Access to Information and 
Freedom of Expression (FAIFE), wrote an 
introduction for this volume. This book 
can serve as a primer for anybody wish­
ing to know more about library associa­
tions in general and about the develop­
ment of codes of ethics in particular.—Sha 
Li Zhang, Wichita State University. 

Expectations of Librarians in the 21st Cen­
tury. Foreword by Leigh Estabrook. Ed. 
Karl Bridges. Westport, Conn.: Green­
wood (Greenwood Library Manage­
ment Collection), 2003. 235p. alk. paper, 
$67.95 (ISBN 0313322945). LC 2002­
28438. 

This is the third book in the Greenwood 
Library Management Collection series 
and consists of fifty-three short essays by 
information professionals. The contribu­
tors share their insights on what skills 
they think librarians of the twenty-first 
century must have to meet the growing 
demands of users and the resulting 
changes to library services and opera­
tions. This collection of essays will cer­
tainly be of interest to future librarians, 
but seasoned professionals also will find 
much that is thought provoking. These 
essays confirm that the changes and chal­
lenges many of us currently face are com­
mon to all academic libraries (only three 
of the essays are from public librarians). 

There are several recurrent themes in 
these essays, including technology, li­
brary use patterns, communication, im­
age, customer service, and, above all, 
change. The issues of change—what has 
changed, why it has changed, and how 
we deal with change—motivate nearly 
every essay. One contributor notes that 
change has become so prevalent that it 
permeates everything we do and that we 
should not expect a job description to re­
main stable for more than a couple of 
years. Though never articulated, the es­
says seem to fall into two broad catego­
ries: how the profession has changed, and 
what skills future librarians will need in 
order to work within this changing envi­
ronment. 

January 2004 

Several contributors claim that technol­
ogy is undeniably the major cause of 
change. This change means that we must 
be able to provide assistance to users in a 
variety of software and hardware appli­
cations. The ability to distinguish between 
new technology and necessary technol­
ogy is, perhaps, even more important. If 
it were just about technology, librarians 
would have been replaced with machines 
long ago. 

In her foreword, Leigh Estabrook cat­
egorizes the characteristics that will be 
needed by future librarians into three 
broad areas: knowledge, skills, and atti­
tudes. Other contributors emphasize that 
librarians of the twenty-first century need 
to have a broad general education, good 
communication skills, flexibility and 
open-mindedness, and the capacity to 
multitask. A sense of humor also was 
mentioned in several essays. Surprisingly 
few of the contributors emphasized 
strong subject specialties; instead, most 
recommended that future librarians be 
good communicators who have a broad 
overall education. On the other hand, 
subject specialization was emphasized 
within the context of the research univer­
sity in which librarians work as fellow 
researchers with their teaching faculty 
colleagues. 

Research on library user behavior in­
dicates that patrons access information 
differently today than in the past. Because 
of this, the traditional dichotomy between 
public and technical services is blurring. 
Several contributors suggested that the 
distinction will disappear entirely be­
cause everyone who works within the li­
brary will focus equally on providing ac­
cess to information. Most of the essays, 
especially those by Angela Horne and 
Lorena O’English, emphasize strong cus­
tomer service skills; I encourage both of 
them to expand their essays in a future 
publication. 

So what kind of person will most likely 
possess the new skills? All of the contribu­
tors addressed this question, but a couple 
of them were especially creative in envi­
sioning the personal qualities needed. 



Karen Fisher used the personality char­
acteristics of eight historical figures (in­
cluding Charles Darwin for his ability to 
synthesize ideas and observations from a 
variety of fields, Barbara Jordan for her 
talents as an eloquent spokesperson, and 
Arthur C. Clarke for his ability to envi­
sion the future and anticipate change) to 
illustrate her point, and Carla Stoffle 
made it a team project by asking various 
people within her library to participate 
in the project. 

The editor ’s introduction explains the 
reason for the seemingly unorganized ar­
rangement of the essays, but it would 
have been more useful to know some­
thing about how the book was conceptu­
alized and if the papers were solicited 
broadly (when and where) or if they were 
by invitation only. All of the essays are 
well written, but as most are no more than 
two to four pages each, they tend to suf­
fer from being overly broad and general 
in nature. It would have been useful to 
know something about each contributor 
and especially what each does in 
librarianship; the duties for which these 
librarians are responsible probably influ­
ence their perspectives on the question of 
what skills future librarians should pos­
sess. 

The inclusion of an index is usually a 
welcome addition, but it should at least 
be properly alphabetized and the index­
ing terms should be evaluated. Unfortu­
nately, this is not the case. Perhaps it 
would have been better to omit the index 
entirely than to create one that does not 
reflect the full content of the volume. 

Index to advertisers 
AIAA 1 
Annual Reviews 35 
CHOICE 27 
Graphics Press 7 
Greenwood Publishing cover 2 
Haworth Press 55 
Library Technologies cover 3 
Modern Language 4, 5 
Paratext 77 
ScienceDirect cover 4 

Book Reviews 85 

All but a couple of the contributors are 
from academic institutions, and for future 
librarians to get a full picture of librarianship 
in the twenty-first century, the collection 
should have included contributions from li­
brarians outside academia. Though many of 
the job skills required by academic librarians 
also pertain to public and special librarians, 
my experience in special libraries leads me 
to conclude that jobs outside academia 
would place greater emphasis on commu­
nication, marketing, budgeting, and analyti­
cal skills. Despite some editorial shortfalls, 
Expectations of Librarians in the 21st Century is 
an enjoyable read and an excellent way to 
begin or continue a dialogue about issues 
related to the library’s future.—Susanne K. 
Clement, University of Kansas. 

High-Level Subject Access Tools and 
Techniques in Internet Cataloging. Ed. 
Judith R. Ahronheim. Binghamton, 
N.Y.: Haworth, 2002. (Copublished si­
multaneously as Journal of Internet 
Cataloging, vol. 5, no. 4.) 115p. alk. pa­
per, cloth $39.95 (ISBN 0789020246); 
paper $24.95 (ISBN 0789020254). LC 
2002-151190. 

Although librarians have used the 
Internet for quite some time, only recently 
have they begun to investigate how to use 
classification methods to improve access 
to online information. According to Judith 
Ahronheim, metadata specialist librarian 
in the University Library of the Univer­
sity of Michigan, the problem with using 
existing Web tools is that subject headings 
are not easy to use and require constant 
upkeep. This book’s authors propose to 
apply library cataloguing techniques to 
the Web interface. This is a far more com­
plex endeavor than it may seem. These 
articles suggest a series of ideas, prob­
lems, and solutions to the application of 
online subject classification. 

Diane Vizine-Goetz, building on Alan 
Wheatley’s article “Subject Trees on the 
Internet: A New Role for Bibliographic 
Classification?” (Journal of Internet Cata­
loging vol. 2, no. 3/4, 2000), compares the 
DDC classification scheme with the sub­
ject format used by Yahoo! and