reviews.indd events and developments in the same areas discussed in the chapters and dis- cusses current challenges and the future status of libraries and librarianship. An appendix consisting of three chronologies, each covering the period from 1944, the end of World War II, to 2005—the first, of signifi cant historical events; the second, of technological ad- vances affecting libraries; and the third, of developments in libraries and librari- anship—elucidates the text. The book concludes with a bibliography of works, most of which are mentioned in the text, and a thorough subject and personal name index. Bobinski’s work will serve generations of library historians and library students as a concise blending of facts and personal insights into American library history in the last half of the twentieth century and at the turn of the twenty-fi rst cen- tury.—Plummer Alston “Al” Jones, Jr., East Carolina University. Brogan, Martha. Contexts and Contribu- tions: Building the Distributed Library. Washington, D.C.: Digital Library Federation, 2006. 282p. alk. paper, $35 (ISBN 9781933645339). LC 2006-22847. Also available online at http://purl. oclc.org/DLF/pubs/dlf106. The creation of a worldwide network of interoperable digital libraries has been the shared objective of many individuals working at the cutting edge of librarian- ship over the last decade. Great strides toward this end have been made and advances are occurring at an ever-in- creasing pace, but there is much left to be accomplished before this lofty goal can be realized. Martha L. Brogan’s Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library is an impressive overview of the latest developments toward this ambi- tious objective. A follow-up to a 2003 survey of digital library aggregation services, Contexts and Contributions is the latest in a series of works sponsored by the Digital Library Federation (DLF) that uses the Open Book Reviews 459 Archives Initiative Protocol for Meta- data Harvesting (OAI-PMH) as a lens with which to focus and drive the de- velopment of this interconnected digital library network. OAI-PMH is a system by which repositories can share catalog- ing-style data about local digital objects (e-publications, theses, photographs, manuscript finding aids, and so on) with other “aggregating institutions” through the use of Web-based “harvesters,” thus centralizing access to information that is usually widely dispersed. As suggested by the title, this work investigates the context or “ecosystem” of scholarly communications and digital libraries, and then illustrates how various digital library aggregation services (the “contributions” of the title) have adapted to best thrive and serve their users in the ever-changing digital world. Informa- tion about these “contributions” make up the bulk of the book and are based upon survey responses gathered during the fall of 2005. The author focuses on a core of forty of these services to illustrate the “purpose, functions, and challenges of next generation aggregation services,” before closing with a summary of “next generation service characteristics.” While not written for the digital library beginner, this broad sweep of the field could be used by those new to digital library concepts to identify major issues, players, and projects that could be investigated further in other resources. The author provides an ex- tensive bibliography to help with just this sort of endeavor. At the same time, she also manages to provide those more familiar with digital library concepts ample fodder for the creation of their own analyses, while refraining from revealing what it all means and where it is all go- ing—probably because there is no way of making such a forecast at this point, scholarly or otherwise. The analysis that Brogan does employ is subtle and inher- ent in the structure of her description of the maturing digital library. She does see the role of institutional repositories (IR) 460 College & Research Libraries changing the very foundation of digital libraries and scholarly communication. She envisions digital libraries becoming more user-centered, as “bridges” are built to encourage the migration of digital objects from the digital library context to individual and collaborative digital workspaces and classrooms. This work is a successful, substantial snapshot of digital library development, and one relatively unblurred for having been taken of a subject not only in motion, but motions. So much is occurring in the digital library world that the provision of an organized, coherent overview is more than welcome.—Kevin Cherry, East Carolina University. Doubleday, Richard B. Jan Tschichold, De- signer: The Penguin Years. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll; Aldershot, U.K.: Lund Humphries, 2006. 218p. alk. paper, $39.95 (ISBN 1584561785; 0853319464). LC 2006-284193. On my first extended stay in the United Kingdom in 1966, I remember my surprise and chagrin at seeing row upon row of repetitively designed paperbacks lining the shelves of London booksellers. They were, of course, acres of Penguins—and all of the monotonous subspecies thereof. What a dull and curiously boring country I had found myself in: bland food, bland streetscapes, bland weather, and now, bland books—the final insult to my lively adolescent sensibilities. I should have spent my “junior year abroad” some- where more colorful. Happily, I eventually grew up and came to appreciate, even cherish, those seemingly humble volumes for what they were and remain: masterpieces of design and typography. (I should also add that I have successfully outgrown my mono- chromatic view of the United Kingdom.) The understated elegance and beauty of Penguins in their heyday was in no small measure due to the impact of one of the 20th century’s giants of book design, Jan Tschichold. In a brief but eventful three years (1947–1950), the German typogra- September 2007 pher did what a native son could probably not have: brought order, discipline, and classical balance to the design formulary of the Penguin imprint. It must have been diffi cult to have been a German in Britain in the immediate postwar years. But to have been a German brought in to reform and overhaul the entire design and production operation of a huge, mass-market publisher must have been a major challenge. Tschichold described this challenge forthrightly: “The man who controls typographical design in an English publishing house is called the typographer. The typographer’s communication with printers and binders is by letter. Penguin Books uses a large number of printing and binding firms all over the British Isles. Distances are so great that visits even to a firm in London are only occasionally possible … Correc- tions can hardly ever be made quickly … But now, along came a man who not only wanted nearly everything changed, but also, in this most conservative of coun- tries, produced an entirely new set of ty- pographical rules.” This was not a recipe for a long and happy stay. Indeed, his collaborator at Penguin, Eric Frederiksen, remarks in a letter printed as one of the appendices to this volume that Tschichold “knew exactly what he wanted and how to carry matters through in his own way: a rather German way and very different from the English, which often made him feel uncomfortable and lonely … I am sure his stay in England would have been happier had he only tried to understand better the special way of living, so con- trary to strict German att itudes.” That Tschichold accomplished as much as he did in a mere three years only underscores his well-earned eminence in the history of design and typography. Created in 1935 by Allen Lane, Pen- guin Books took as its motto, “Good Books Cheap.” However, the genius of Lane was not just in producing an af- fordable product, but to produce a thor- oughly “branded” one as well. Branding is something we hear and read much