This is in many ways an interesting book. First of all, it is important to emphasise that the themes of the book are very practical in nature and it is not a piece of research. Rather, it is what one could call reflections on the nature of librarianship and the forces that changes the profession.
An interesting feature of the book is the composition and the approach. The content of the book is divided into ten chapters. Each chapter starts with a kind of short essay stating the problem. The single chapter has a couple of opinions concerning the theme from a wide range of practioneers in the profession. These opinions are called solutions and they are in reality responses from the library community to some of the unintended effects of the Internet. Many of the solutions come from journals like Library Journal, Computers in Libraries and Chronicle of Higher Education. Together, the ten chapters of the book incorporate around 50 solutions. This means that the average paper is just a five‐page piece. The book has an index and extensive bibliographies including url's and lists of recommended readings for each chapter. Further, the book is amplified and updated through the editor's web page: http://marylaine.com/book/index.html
The heading for each chapter is catchy. It goes like: regaining control over selection. Rescuing the book. Making them adapt to us: Training our users. Access Issues. Running to stay in place: continuous training and Disappearing Data just to mention some of the chapter heading. From the chapter headings it is evident that the book address some of the most discussed and challenging issues for all types of libraries.
One of the strengths of the book is its diversity of topics. It really covers a lot of ground and overall it is very stimulating in its approaches to the topics. The solutions and opinions are generally stated in an interesting and sometimes provocative way. To give hints of this, take a look at statements and opinions concerning the need for a policy for a link collection. Are they annotated? Are they indexed? What does the library wants to achieve with a link collection? These questions are really food for thought. Another interesting case story reports on how a library let vendors bid for the journals it wanted in the collection trying to avoid preset packages that often contain journals never used. Or what about becoming partners with the local bookstore through means of knowledge sharing? There are also some thought‐provoking papers on teaching information literacy skills to both students and children.
The book poses several provocative thoughts about the library profession and its interaction with stakeholders. But it has also some very good, sound and down to earth advice. I noticed a paper called “Teach them while they are asking for information”. The technique described in that paper is a simple think aloud technique. The librarian get a question and simply starts to think aloud about the process trying to get the customer interested in the process and the more complicated information and information structure behind the simple answer. One could say that the librarian is showing an example. Anyway, it is a simple and straightforward way to teach at least some information literacy skills. Another sound and convincing example relates to other aspects of information literacy teaching. The paper describes how the teaching of information skills can depart from some more personal problems the students have. The example used is a student in the process of selling a house. The assignment given to that student has to do with the house selling business and the student became quite knowledgeable in the field with immediate effects on her own house selling project.
I think that the book is a good source of inspiration for librarians working and struggling with all the challenges the Internet pose on libraries. There is so much interesting stuff one can use. Researchers can use the book to get a glimpse of the problems librarians are struggling with.
