580 College & Research Libraries May 2019 the theory and practice of digital literacy, Digital Literacy Unpacked offers much of value to edu- cators, librarians, and instructional designers.—Melissa Anderson, Southern Oregon University Margaret Zelman Law. Cultivating Engaged Staff: Better Management for Better Libraries. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 128p. Paper, $55.00 (ISBN: 978-1-4408-5222-0). LC: 2017004832. A library’s most valuable resource is its staff. It is the library staff who ensure excellent customer service and research assistance to our communities, who purchase, preserve, and make accessible print and electronic resources of all kinds, and who keep the doors open early in the morning and late into the night. The work and care of library staff (including librarians and library assistants alike) keep libraries running, and they deserve the best possible support from their managers and supervisors. Patrons get the best service from staff that gets what they need from their work environment. Margaret Zelman Law’s insightful and detailed volume can help you learn more about both individual and team needs and how to better meet them. Having worked in both public and academic libraries, as well as library consortia, the author is now a consultant to libraries worldwide on organizational development and other manage- ment challenges, as well as an instructor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. With advanced degrees in both information studies and business administration, Law brings together her experiences and the research in both fields to dem- onstrate how management practices impact organizational climate and provides concrete examples for how practices can be changed to improve staff engagement in any kind of library. At only 128 pages, this is not a long book; however, it is a very important one for anyone who supervises staff. I encourage everyone who picks up this book to read through the in- troduction. Entitled “Employees and Their Relationship with Work,” this section alone offers a number of valuable insights, not only into what staff members are looking for in terms of meaningful work that engages them, but it may also help you better understand your own motivations and connections with the work you do every day. Understanding these underly- ing motivations can help you set better intentions and goals for yourself as well for any staff you supervise. The introduction lays out the groundwork for the rest of the book by exam- ining what engagement really means. The author presents eight ways that people relate to their work and describes each in some detail: psychological contract, professional identity, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, burnout, and boredom (xiv). She links not only to what library literature exists on the topics, but to the broader business management literature as well, arguing that, while libraries may not be concerned with profit, they are concerned with good stewardship of resources, including and especially human resources. The introduction concludes with a brief outline for each of the seven chapters to help you determine which may be most relevant to your situation. The chapters move from theoretical to practical, with the first five chapters focusing on the workplace. The first chapter discusses more in depth the concepts presented in the introduction, and the second chapter focuses on fairness and the different kinds of organizational justice, including procedural, distributive, interactional, and information justice. The second-to-last chapter examines how professional organizations, library and information programs, faculty Book Reviews 581 associations, and unions can help better prepare professional librarians for the realities of the workplace and can serve as additional outlets for fostering engagement in the field outside the day-to-day work of the employing organization. This chapter also explores the concepts of professional identity and professional commitment, which will be the most useful for those supervising professional staff. The final chapter, “Evaluation and Change,” reinforces the central argument that managers have a large role to play in how staff feels about their organization and repeats the seven “conditions that nurture employee engagement” posited in the third chapter, “Increasing Employee Engagement.” These conditions include positive and effective relation- ships with managers and coworkers and supervisor support; interesting, worthwhile, and meaningful work; sufficient resources to complete work successfully; perceived organizational support; autonomy; role clarity; and organizational justice (112). Strategies for creating and sup- porting these conditions are provided throughout the book as well as in the concluding chapter. Each of the seven chapters includes reflection questions at the end that could be used for either personal reflection or discussion with others—or, perhaps ideally, both. Anecdotes from anonymous colleagues are interspersed throughout, balancing the research results and theoretical concepts with personal stories to which many of us can relate. References are provided at the end of the book, followed by a thorough index that allows you to easily search for discussions of particular concepts and mindsets, such as “Autonomy” and “Not my job.” Answering the reflection questions and reliving past difficult experiences may not be easy, but it is worthwhile and can help you and your organization move forward in new and more positive directions. A number of books have come out recently about difficult work environments, such as The Dysfunctional Library: Challenges and Solutions to Workplace Relation- ships (2017) by Jo Henry, Joe Eshleman, and Richard Moniz and Academic Libraries and Toxic Leadership (2017) by Alma Ortega. Take a moment to evaluate the environment you and your staff are working in and use this invaluable new addition to the literature to start creating the healthy and engaging environment that every employee deserves.—Kristen Cardoso, University of California, Santa Cruz Lyda Fontes McCartin and Rachel Dineen. Toward a Critical-Inclusive Assessment Practice for Library Instruction. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2018. 149p. Paper. $18.00 (ISBN: 978-1-63400-035-2). LC: Z711.25.C65 M37. One of the core learning outcomes that information literacy (IL) instruc- tors aim to help their students achieve is to interrogate the credibility of information. Part of that process is to recognize the credibility of authors who have acquired valid information through experience and education; another part is to question hegemonic pressures in effect in the information dissemination ecosystem. Toward a Critical-Inclusive Assessment Practice for Library Instruction seeks to outline assessment methods for helping students learn both of these lessons. Information- literate individuals recognize gaps in their knowledge. Students come to educational institutions with gaps in their knowledge, which library instructors must help them to recognize and fill. However, students also have knowledge of themselves as learners that library instructors do not possess. This book outlines assessment processes for library instructors to fill the gaps in their knowledge of their students. _GoBack _GoBack _GoBack