George M. Eberhart, editor of this fifth permutation of a great idea, presents a handbook of library what-is and how-to information for any questioner interested in libraries, their professionals, their collections, their operations, their patrons, or their issues. Additionally, the handbook addresses questions in library core values, ethics, technology, currency, and other topics and facts, including my personal favourite section of trivia and fun facts: Librariana. And presumably because librarians like making lists and then giving the lists to people to help them find things (Wilson, 1968), this Librariana section provides lists like Famous Librarian's Favorite Books (one of Eberhart's favourite books is Wikipedia); like Libraries and Librarians in Film and TV 2004-2012 (there are 25 pages worth of titles with abstracts); and like images from a library postcard collection of collector Larry T. Nix.
Because one need not read this book from chapter 1 through chapter 10 in the presented order to find something useful in it, I mention my favourite section first though it is the last section presented. Content leading up to this last book section is packed with articles, facts, and numbers about library goings-on. Chapter 1 begins with the article “What is a library?” and goes on to describe distinct features of different library types, academic and public libraries to digital and mobile libraries. Chapters 2 and 3 address topics about people and the profession, describing items like job hunting, library boards, volunteers, grant writing, and library education. Remaining chapters cover topics in diversity of materials, from microfiche to kindle, from traditional novels to graphic novels, and from video games to board games. The chapters on operations, users, and technology address roles and responsibilities in a library and how professionals and patrons handle the array of reasons and ways people step (actually or virtually) into a library.
The length of these articles is the strength of this book. Each article offers just enough information to provide an overview and direction for further investigation, much like reference works have traditionally been intended. The handbook reminds me of the sort I might find in the For Dummies series except, not really for dummies; that is, it will be of tremendous use for people with an interest in the topics of librarianship, but not necessarily with detailed training in librarianship (Kearns et al., 2007), and will foster basic curiosity about libraries, librarians, and librariana. Articles are short and topic coverage is simple enough for quick overview and thoughtful enough to arouse interest.
Articles are written by many different authors and are relatively brief, one to three page recapitulations often from other published works. There is no index of authors, but authors are included in the one available index, and author affiliation, and scholarly and practical experiences are not listed. I always appreciate knowing what makes authors qualified to write reference works.
It seems immediately obvious that this book could serve as a textbook for an introductory course in librarianship, perhaps in high school or undergraduate classes, and seems like a perfectly useful handbook to make available to reference staff who receive a lot of questions about libraries themselves, perhaps in academic libraries that support programmes and classes in library, information, document, archives, and museum studies. It also makes a great coffee-table or waiting-room book.
My final note is about the title of this series. Calling anything a “whole” anything would seem to deceive the very readers it aims to attract, which editor Eberhart acknowledges in the preface. For, if the aim is to offer bits and teasers of data, facts, and curiosa to draw in or quickly inform a questioning person, calling something whole is calling something complete, when the information professions essentially function by the notion that there is yet more to catalogue, abstract, index, or put on a list. “Complete representation of public knowledge is impossible, but there is no particular point at which we would have to stop in our attempts to say what we know” (Wilson, 1977, p. 25). In this vein, the editor and I advise libraries and individuals who purchase The Whole Library Handbook, 5th edition, to make room on the bookshelf rather than weeding old editions. The fifth edition does not replace the first through fourth published between 1991 and 2006, but makes them more complete, inching just a bit closer, perhaps, to living up to its title.
