reviews.indd


Book Reviews 477 

“Smart Searching: An Easily Customiz-
able Subject-Specific Online Information 
Literacy Tutorial,” does not make it clear 
that a template was created for science 
librarians to modify for various sciences; 
likewise, it is not clear that the tutorial 
in chapter fifteen, “From Classroom to 
Computer: Collaboration, Integration, and 
Success,” was created in conjunction with 
education faculty who teach “Children’s 
Literature in the Classroom.” Daugherty 
and Russo do provide brief overviews of 
the essays in their introduction, allowing 
the reader to garner some information 
about the different programs by scanning 
the introduction. 

This problem of the absence of ab-
stracts is compounded by the lack of 
indexing in this collection. The reader 
cannot easily locate the points mentioned 
in the previous paragraph and is also un-
aware of gems that may be “hidden” in an 
essay such as the type of soft ware utilized, 
what was learned about teaching APA 
citation style (chapter three, “The Devel-
opment of a Library Research Methods 
Course for Online Graduate Students in 
Education”) or a novel method of adver-
tising library resources (chapter thirteen, 
“Smart Searching: An Easily Customiz-
able Subject-Specific Online Information 
Literacy Tutorial”). 

These criticisms aside, this collection 
is an invaluable resource to any librarian 
either considering the creation of a new 
information literacy program or redesign-
ing one already in place. Given the high 
interest in information literacy programs 
in the profession that has been expressed 
in many venues, a compilation such as 
this one is long overdue. This book is 
highly recommended.—Lisa Vassady, 
Radford University. 

Richard M. Dougherty. Streamlining 
Library Services: What We Do, How 
Much Time It Takes, What It Costs, and 
How We Can Do It Better. Lanham, 
Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2008. 272p. 
alk. paper, $45 (ISBN 9780810851986). 
LC2007-40288. 

“Accountability” is a theme that runs 
through much of the literature of higher 
education today. In the administrative 
realm, the call for accountability may be 
reflected in more transparent budgeting 
practices or more stringent oversight of 
financial transactions. In the classroom, 
the call for accountability supports the 
movement toward outcomes-based as-
sessment. In the library, it has influenced 
the development of new approaches to 
data collection and reporting, strategic 
planning and budgeting, and recognition 
that libraries must embrace a “culture 
of assessment.” Retitled for the 21st 
century, this new edition of Dougherty 
and Heinritz’s Scientific Management of 
Library Operations (2nd ed., 1982) presents 
a variety of approaches to engaging in 
rigorous inquiry into workplace activities, 
processes, and workflows. 

In the current edition, Dougherty 
presents an argument for the importance 
of assessment of the work environment, 
an introduction to the tradition of “sci-
entific management” (a term associated 
most closely with the work of Frederick 
Taylor in the early 20th century, and 
with W. Edwards Deming’s Total Quality 
Management [TQM] movement in the 
1980s), and an overview of how several 
specific tools for scientifi c management 
might be applied in the library context 
(for instance, process analysis, diary 
studies, time studies). The goal of the text 
is not simply to introduce the reader to 
these approaches for assessing the work 
environment, however, but to “rescue” 
these tools of analysis from what the 
author perceives as a general sentiment 
that they are outdated. Terms like “sci-
entific management,” “Taylorism,” and 
“TQM” call to mind specifi c approaches 
to management that Dougherty recog-
nizes many have rejected, and this text is 
essentially a plea not to “throw the baby 
out with the bathwater.” Dougherty ar-
gues that anyone concerned about library 
assessment or library management today 
should continue to take advantage of the 
analytical tools developed as part of the 



478 College & Research Libraries 

scientific management movement even 
if he or she has no desire to embrace the 
management philosophies they were 
used to support. 

There are statements found through-
out this volume that make this argument 
compelling. “[Almost] any library process 
could be improved if one were only willing 
to conduct a thorough study,” Dougherty 
writes. Without data, he continues, no de-
cision about library processes or services 
can “proceed beyond an emotional level.” 
Few who have been involved in library 
assessment, or who have confronted the 
limitations of prevailing methods for the 
measurement of library service activities, 
would disagree with these statements. 
The limitations of his argument are more 
obvious when one considers the examples 
Dougherty provides for applying these 
analytical tools. 

Consider, for example, Dougherty’s 
description of the use of check sheets 
for the assessment of reference services. 
While check sheets (or “tally sheets”) re-
main the basic tool for the assessment of 
reference services in many libraries, and 
Dougherty has updated his discussion to 
account for the development of soft ware 
applications such as RefTracker (www.al-
tarama.com.au/reftrack.htm), this reader 
was struck by the narrow scope of the 
description provided. Consistent with 
the underlying philosophy of scientific 
management, Dougherty’s description of 
the correct use of check sheets focuses on 
the mechanics of their use and not on how 
this type of data collection may (or may 
not) contribute to a useful assessment of 
the reference service program at the par-
ticipating library. Knowing how to make 
use of a check sheet system to assess and 
improve reference service processes is an 
important skill for today’s librarian, but it 
is just as important to know how limited 
the check sheet, as a tool of analysis, can 
be in terms of meeting those goals. 

Another limitation can be found in 
Dougherty’s discussion of the ways in 
which these tools of analysis can be ap-
plied to “[documenting] the contributions 

September 2008 

of library resources and services to the 
quality of an undergraduate student’s 
experience” (p. 183) or, more to the point, 
how they cannot. In a description of how to 
conduct a cost-benefit analysis, he writes: 

I’m familiar with quite a few college 
librarians who are scrambling to 
document their library’s impact. I’m 
not suggesting that such analyses are 
impossible, only that they are very 
difficult to carry out to the point of 
having meaningful results. It might 
be possible to document a library’s 
contributions, but I don’t see how 
those contributions can be meaning-
fully translated into dollars. 

I agree with Dougherty both that this 
is a critical concern for library directors 
today and that it is complicated. I agree, 
further, that the tools provided by this 
text are likely not equal to the task. Un-
fortunately, in agreeing with the author 
on these points, my commitment to his 
overall argument (that is, that one should 
embrace these approaches to the assess-
ment of the effi  ciency and eff ectiveness of 
the library as workplace) is weakened. 

In considering Dougherty’s statements 
regarding the limited utility of these tools 
for assessing the impact of the library on 
the student experience, I was reminded 
of the qualitative approaches to assess-
ment described in the recent collection by 
Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gibbons, 
Studying Students: The Undergraduate Stu-
dent Experience at the University of Rochester 
(2007).1 Foster and Gibbons demonstrate 
how qualitative approaches to inquiry, 
equal in rigor to the quantitative ap-
proaches favored by earlier generations 
that are the focus for the current work, 
can guide library approaches to assess-
ment and accountability. In the end, a 
comprehensive approach to these issues 
must draw on both traditions—quan-
titative and qualitative—and this is a 
dimension to the argument that I do not 
find in the Dougherty text. This is not to 
take away from the very eff ective intro-



duction to scientific management tools 
that Dougherty provides. It is simply to 
suggest that those tools no longer form 
the foundation of scientific study of the 
library as workplace, or the library as a 
feature of the campus and community, 
as they may once have. 

It is unusual to find a text focused on 
operational issues in library management 
returned to the shelves after a gap in revi-
sion of a quarter-century. Clearly, there 
are many features of this text that de-
serve renewed consideration, especially 
the author ’s call for embracing what, 
in another recent work, Susan Gibbons 
(2007)2 referred to an “R&D mind-set” 
in the library. The fundamental lesson of 
the current work is not that check sheets, 
time studies, and other tools of scientific 
management need be adopted, but that 
there are few decisions about the work we 
do that would not benefit from rigorous 
analysis and a commitment to improve 
that work based on the results of such 
analysis.—Scott Walter, University of Il-
linois at Urbana-Champaign. 

Notes 
1. Nancy Fried Foster and Susan Gib-

bons, Studying Students: The Undergraduate 
Research Project at the University of Roch-
ester (Chicago: Association of College & 
Research Libraries, 2007). 

2. Susan Gibbons, The Academic Library 
and the Net Gen Student: Making the Con-
nections (Chicago: Association of College 
& Research Libraries, 2007). 

Howard F. Greisdorf and Brian C. 
O’Connor. Structures of Image Collec-
tions from Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc to Flickr. 
Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlim-
ited, 2008. 192p. alk. paper, $45 (ISBN 
1591583752). LC 2007-33044. 

Based on the description of this book, 
readers would likely expect a theoretical, 
practical, or contemplative book on the 
history of image collections, digitization’s 
impact on image collections, methods of 
constructing image collections, or points 
of consideration in defining and building 

Book Reviews 479 

image collections. The book does not fully 
address any of these points; instead, it of-
fers an uneven mixture of broad strokes 
and detailed information that will be 
unlikely to appeal to scholars. General 
audience readers may find the book a 
useful prompt for discussions on the 
concept of image collections; however, the 
book’s description does not lend itself to 
interesting those readers. 

Even though the book’s contents do 
not match the description, the book still 
has ambitious goals. The book seems to 
be attempting to serve as a primer for 
the human element of image compre-
hension and usage as well as a primer to 
image collections as a whole, while also 
attempting to destabilize traditional no-
tions of high art by countering the idea of 
image collections as those designed and 
selected by experts. It succeeds and fails 
in these goals in different ways in each of 
its five sections. Part of the failure is due 
to readability problems from being writ-
ten by two writers with different styles, 
and this is even explained in the preface. 
Other problems stem from the sometimes 
disjointed structure of the book, with the 
final section adding material that would 
have been more appropriately covered 
earlier on, and from the occasional over-
simplification of concepts. Issues of struc-
ture and style should have been smoothed 
over with the editor, but perhaps the time-
sensitive nature of the material required 
an overly short editorial process. 

The book’s five sections are: “Seeing 
and Believing,” “The Language of Im-
age Structures,” “Image Collections,” 
“Groupthink, Deindividuation, and 
Desensitivity,” and “Lessons from the Fu-
ture.” The fi rst offers a broad discussion of 
human vision and methods of organizing 
collections. This section could be useful 
for a reading group discussion of image 
collections; and, indeed, the section states 
that it aims to raise questions and spark 
interest in the idea that the “structuring 
image collections is no longer a mundane 
issue but the basis for challenging philo-
sophical debate.” The first section also