reviews.indd sor who’s received much att ention from students of library administration for his emphasis on “organizational learning.” But the likely reason for reviewing this book in this journal is that the publisher is a leading “library lit” source. If one stretches chapter five a ways, one could say that the value of the book is to show that “they” (management students) can learn from “us,” rather than vice-versa. Another book could have given valuable examples of how cultural factors created problems when ignored (or enabled new solutions, when looked at), examples with implications for libraries. But this isn’t that book.—Gregory Finnegan, Harvard University. The Role of the Library in the First Col- lege Year. Ed. Larry Hardesty. Colum- bia, S.C.: National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, University of South Caroli- na (The First-Year Experience Monograph Series, no. 45), 2007. 296p. $40 (ISBN 1889271543). LC 2006-100837. Librarians have been directly involved in the education of first-year college stu- dents for over a century, but the rise of the “fi rst-year experience” (FYE) movement has provided them with new opportuni- ties to contribute to academic programs aimed at enhancing undergraduate student success. Librarian involvement with FYE programs (and with fi rst-year student instruction more broadly) has been documented many times, but this collection represents the most substan- tial attempt to bring discussions of the academic library as a “critical and central learning environment of undergraduate education in the United States” into the mainstream literature of higher educa- tion. For that alone, it is a welcome (and long overdue) addition to the field. Aimed both at instruction librarians and at the academic and student affairs administrators responsible for FYE programs, this collection provides the reader with an overview of existing work and a venue for discussions of emergent Book Reviews 563 practice. “Foundations” chapters intro- duce their primary audiences to each other through reviews of topics such as information literacy instruction and stu- dent engagement. “Initiatives” chapters provide information on best practices, including studies of librarian involve- ment in FYE programs across the country, and of the emergence of the “First-Year- Experience Librarian” as a professional position supporting the development of sustainable, programmatic collaboration between librarians and FYE educators. “Connections” chapters demonstrate how inquiry into areas such as assessment of student learning and student retention can inform the work of librarians and FYE educators equally. Finally, “Campus Case Studies” introduce the reader to a variety of active FYE-library programs across the country. Unfortunately, while the design of the collection is excellent, it is uneven in its execution. It is uneven because, while there are some chapters that present data gathered through well-designed research proj- ects, others provide primarily literature reviews and descriptions of existing practice at one or another institution. Given the number of descriptive essays already available on this subject in the library literature, it is disappointing to see familiar ground trod again. More- over, the connections made between the essays in the current volume and the literature on library-FYE collaboration to which it contributes is uneven. The collection would benefit from having the programs described placed more firmly into the broader contexts of research and practice. The “Campus Case Studies,” in par- ticular, seemed limited in terms of their diversity and depth. Of the thirteen cases considered, seven come from small, lib- eral arts colleges (and two from the same institution). Moreover, they are too brief to provide the foundation for future in- quiry that one might hope to find in a set of related case studies. Each of the case studies describes a program of unques- 564 College & Research Libraries tionable local value, but the reader is not provided with a clear sense of why these programs were selected for inclusion, or in what ways they are exemplary (or at least representative of broader trends in practice). Finally, while reflecting on the issues raised in this collection and the picture it paints of instructional collaboration between academic libraries and FYE programs, this reviewer could not escape the sense that it presents a more effec- tive study of the past than it does of the potential these collaborative programs have for the future. There is something almost quaint about the cover image selected for this collection and its depic- tion of a student laden down with print volumes. On a campus where “digital natives” are redefining our approach to undergraduate instruction, is this really representative of “the role of the library in the first college year”? This is a useful collection, especially to those librarians and FYE educators not already familiar with the history of collaboration between our communities of practice, but it may be a more effective summary of where we have been than it is a vision of where we should be going. Even given these limitations, there is no doubt that this collection will provide useful ideas for librarians planning to approach an FYE coordinator to build collaborative approaches to information literacy instruction for fi rst-year college students. It is an important work that provides librarians with an introduction to the first-year experience and academic administrators with an introduction to information literacy instruction and as- sessment. Simply by providing the intel- lectual space where those introductions can take place, the collection serves a valuable purpose. It is diffi cult, though, to introduce a complex topic to two very different professional communities. The editor has worked diligently to meet the needs of these two audiences, but the col- lection could have done more to capture the rich history of instructional collabo- November 2007 ration between academic librarians and FYE educators.—Scott Walter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Youth Information-Seeking Behavior II: Context, Theories, Models and Issues. Eds. Mary K. Chelton and Colleen Cool. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2007. 382p. alk. paper, $45 (ISBN 081056549). LC 2006-32922. Youth Information-Seeking Behavior II builds on the earlier work of Mary Chelton and Colleen Cool. In this current publica- tion, they have assembled an impressive group of academics from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Ten contributed chapters focus on the information-seeking patterns and needs of children and young adults relating to everyday life and represent a variety of perspectives. In the introductory chapter, Anthony Bernier, a professor at San Jose State University and an expert in library services to young adults, contextualizes the nature of research into youth infor- mation-seeking behavior. Synthesizing past and current research in this field, Bernier identifies opportunities for new areas of research through consideration of children as information producers, the role of peer-to-peer communication using technology, the relationship of in- formation-seeking behavior to cognitive development and literacy, and different patterns and information behaviors of boys and girls. The first chapter, by Karen Fisher and her colleagues, reports on the preliminary findings of their NSF-funded study of the information needs of “tweens.” This is a unique study focusing on the infor- mation behaviors of this particular age group. Subsequent chapters focus on a variety of topics, refl ecting at fi rst glance on a rather eclectic collection of research studies and offering readers the opportu- nity for further investigation through the identification of prominent researchers in the particular fields as well as extensive notes and references.