reviews
Book Reviews 389
Through a persuasive analysis of
women’s networks of community, poli-
tics, kinship, and friendship, the book of-
fers insight into women’s consciousness
as librarians. While adding breadth and
depth to the existing literature on the
educational and professional history of
women librarians, this book also chal-
lenges the myth that the “femininization
of librarianship” is a factor contributing
to the profession’s downgraded image.
Christine Jenkins in her essay also con-
fronts what Geraldine Joncich Clifford
described in the preface as “misconcep-
tions about women librarians’ roles in
defense of intellectual freedom.”
The volume contains two parts. The
first is full of colorful and informative
accounts of heroines and tireless work-
ers whose contributions often have
been omitted or overlooked in the
chronicles of library history. Each article
illustrates the activism and enterprise
of women from Jean Blackwell Hutson
to Adelaide Hasse to Julia Brown
Asplund to Anne Carrol Moore, describ-
ing the vanguard that definitely shaped
the librarian profession. Of all the ar-
ticles, my favorites, “Dorothy Porter
Wesley: Bibliographer, Curator, and
Scholar” and “Librarian, Literary Detec-
tive and Scholar: Fannie Elizabeth
Ratchford,” reminded me of myself. All
articles include endnotes, and some in-
clude bibliographies of sources.
Not every woman worthy of inclu-
sion is found among the chapters in this
monograph. The editor states in chap-
ter one that “There are still many early
library women to identify and study, in-
cluding women of different races and
ethnicities and lesbian women.” But one
can hardly find fault with this effort. It
also is argued that the burgeoning field
of women’s history in librarianship
should do more than tell stories of sex-
ism and oppression. Instead, writes
Geraldine Joncich Clifford, “in order to
advance the historiography of librar-
ianship beyond the herstory phase of
feminist scholarship, it is necessary to
do more than introduce female con-
tributors into the saga. Rather, the ideo-
logical foundations and structural op-
erations of differentiated gendered ex-
perience also need to be revealed and
explained.”
Which is just what part two aims to
do—rescue women from the margins
to which conventional histories have as-
signed them. It contains articles, from
four women librarians, that grapple with
misperceptions and lack of awareness
inherent in HIStory, by considering the
experiences and institutional status of
women. Clearly, the need exists for
more studies of this kind, especially re-
search that compares the experiences
of men and women librarians.
This is an essential book, one that will
be of enduring value to students, re-
searchers, and anyone interested in a
fuller, richer understanding of library
history. There is a detailed subject in-
dex and a delightful cited author index.
Also, I am pleased that placement of
the notes is at the end of each chapter.
One minor flaw is the small print, which
detracts from the book’s readability.
Nevertheless, I wish the widest possible
readership for such a good work.—
Gladys Smiley Bell, Kent State University,
Kent, Ohio.
Reed-Scott, Jutta, principal author. Schol-
arship, Research Libraries, and Global
Index to advertisers
ACRL 394
BIOSIS 309
Blackwell’s cover 3
Brooklyn College 354
Information Quest 296
Library Technologies 322
OCLC 291
Primary Source Media 292
Readmore 337
R.R. Bowker cover 2, 375
Todd Enterprises cover 4
390 College & Research Libraries July 1997
Publishing: The Result of a Study Funded
by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Washington, D.C.: Association of Re-
search Libraries, 1996. xx, 159p. $30.
ISBN 0-918006-78-3. LC 96-13725.
The message is here and the message
is clear: U.S. and Canadian research li-
braries do not now have the resources
to acquire the foreign publications that
are increasingly necessary for schol-
arly research, and unless they begin
to collect cooperatively, they will not
be able to acquire essential foreign
publications. This report traces the de-
cline in foreign acquisitions, identifies
its causes, shows that research librar-
ies are building identical core collec-
tions, and sketches solutions to the
problem. This report should be read and
studied by all area studies librarians, li-
brary directors, and scholars whose re-
search depends even remotely on for-
eign publications. A crisis looms.
This monograph is a result of the As-
sociation of Research Libraries’ (ARL)
Foreign Acquisitions Project, a four-
year study of trends in “global informa-
tion resources” funded by the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. The purpose of
the project was to develop “a clearer
understanding of the forces influencing
North American research libraries’ abil-
ity” to build and maintain collections of
publications produced outside the
United States and Canada. The pres-
sure of budgets, the fluctuations in ex-
change rates, the tremendous increase
in foreign publications in English and in-
digenous languages, and the associated
costs of acquiring, cataloging, and pre-
serving foreign publications are all sig-
nificant factors in the decline of foreign
acquisitions. The solution to this prob-
lem is, according to this study, coopera-
tive action at a time when advances in
communications allow libraries “to re-
design their modes of providing ser-
vice.”
Jutta Reed-Scott, senior program of-
ficer for preservation and collection de-
velopment at ARL, shows how support
for foreign area and language collec-
tions in North American research librar-
ies has waxed and waned, from expan-
sion in the 1960s, when funding was
much more fluid, to subsequent re-
trenchment in the 1970s and 1980s. One
of the key points she makes, quoting a
1984 report issued by the Association
of American Universities (AAU), is that
area collections are crucial to area stud-
ies scholars, but marginal to the pri-
mary concerns of many universities. As
area studies faculty and librarians well
know, “marginal” areas are the most
easily and most readily cut when uni-
versities face a budget crunch, which is
more and more an annual ritual. What
is even more disturbing than the reali-
ties of impending and experienced cuts
is the fact that libraries that temporarily
curtail acquisition of foreign publications
cannot catch up. Not only are libraries
unlikely to be funded in the future as in
the past, but the publications the librar-
ies missed, particularly those from de-
veloping countries, will not be available
for acquisition. And “area studies” en-
compasses virtually the rest of the
world: Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin
America, Russia and Eastern Europe,
and Western Europe.
However, the real crunch comes
when we realize, as this study notes,
that U.S. and Canadian libraries are
building identical collections, leaving the
unique items out of their collections be-
cause “only a handful of libraries—and
foremost among them the Library of
Congress—have invested in building
comprehensive collections of global re-
sources for all world areas.” Reed-Scott
notes that “With some notable excep-
tions, cutbacks in foreign acquisitions
are driven by local demands, with little
consideration of the effects on the en-
tire North American access system for
highly specialized resources.” The truth
of this statement does not take into ac-
count that local demands—the faculty,
Book Reviews 391
students, and other researchers at each
institution—are what drive acquisitions,
and that no library in the United States,
even the Library of Congress, is the
national library.
Reed-Scott calls for “fundamental
changes in the ways major research li-
braries of the U.S. and Canada acquire
and maintain foreign area and lan-
guage collections.” This is to be
achieved through “coordinated strate-
gies for ensuring the success of the ag-
gregate holdings in the face of reduc-
tions at the institutional level.” Her vi-
sion is that libraries will not only collect
collaboratively but also will share ac-
cess and distribution, thus ensuring
comprehensive collections of foreign
materials while containing costs. They
would do this by reallocating local bud-
gets to support access and delivery, a
proposal that many libraries, and their
patrons, might find very difficult to ac-
cept.
Three demonstration projects have
been set up by ARL in partnership with
AAU. They target Latin American acquisi-
tions, German-language materials, and
Japanese-language scientific and technical
resources as samples of the diverse chal-
lenges—due to the “economic, cultural,
political, and linguistic characteristics of
these three cultures”—that will be encoun-
tered in efforts to achieve the goal of col-
laborative acquisitions and access. ARL
also is working with the American Council
of Learned Societies to involve scholarly
societies both to build consensus for the
strategies of this program and to assess
and address their need for foreign research
materials. Another very important compo-
nent of the program focuses on promoting
the education and development of area li-
brarians. The 1995 conference on the de-
velopment of area librarianship, held at In-
diana University, highlighted the projected
shortage of area librarians and the “dimin-
ished priority” of ARL directors in filling
area librarian positions. The time to iden-
tify, educate, and train area specialists is
now, well before implementation of the col-
laborative plan called for in this study, but
little is being done in the United States on a
national or even a local level, nor are for-
eign area library committees actively ad-
dressing this issue, with one or two excep-
tions.
The second part of this study, “Fram-
ing the Problem,” concerns shifts in
area and international studies and in-
formation needs; how the internation-
alization of curricula and research is
changing the way researchers work; the
growth in global publishing between
1980 and 1990; the economics of inter-
national research resources (increases
in the cost of materials coupled with fluc-
tuations in the value of the dollar and a
decline in both internal and external
funding for libraries); and the increas-
ing diversity of resources.
Part three of this study reports on
the collecting patterns of North Ameri-
can research libraries and provides
summaries of the separate surveys of
area studies collections prepared by the
area studies library committees. Most
of the surveys have been published in
full elsewhere, and some are available
on the ARL gopher. Because many of
the surveys were prepared for this
project, they trace the common themes
of trends in the geographic area that is
the focus of the individual committees,
trends in publishing costs, state of col-
lections, cooperative efforts, and the
impact of electronic resources. Only
two of the fifteen summaries mention
the need for support for librarians. The
next section gives information on coop-
erative collection development pro-
grams that already are in place and
functioning.
The final section of this book focuses
on AAU/ARL initiatives in foreign lan-
guage and area studies publications,
with a review of the initial three demon-
stration projects, and presents the ARL
vision for the future. The appendix con-
tains ARL’s strategic plan for improving
392 College & Research Libraries July 1997
access to global information resources
in U.S. and Canadian research librar-
ies. This is followed by a bibliography of
references used in the text.
Aside from the information given in
this study on the ARL initiative, there is
a wealth of useful information that would
be very time-consuming to gather sepa-
rately, particularly the summaries of
area studies library committees, the
surveys on international publishing, and
the information on the economic reali-
ties of maintaining area study collec-
tions. This study is well organized, very
readable, and very important, and is
supported by numerous useful figures
and tables. Its title, however, barely
hints at its contents, nor does it indicate
that the study is a response to an immi-
nent crisis that is being addressed by a
very far-reaching project. Those who
want to keep up on the development of
this program can subscribe to ARL-An-
nounce on the Internet, but ARL also
needs to be even more aggressive in
getting the word out to librarians and
faculty than it has been up to now. And
the issue of recruiting and training the
next generation of area studies librar-
ians must be brought to the fore as the
strategic plan is implemented. The
project and this study already have
made a significant contribution by in-
cluding Canadian libraries.
Three new developments support
the concerns of this project: first, the
U.S. government announced in January
1997 a proposal to make substantial cuts
in the funding for the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service (FBIS), which would
further diminish the resources on for-
eign countries that American scholars
use for research; second, in January, the
Mellon Foundation awarded this project
a substantial grant that will allow for
Southeast Asia and Africa demonstra-
tion projects and will enable ARL to move
faster in promoting coordinated collec-
tion management; and third, U.S. librar-
ies with South Asian collections have
formed three regional consortia to ad-
dress some of the same concerns ad-
dressed in this study.—Raymond Lum,
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachu-
setts.
Wallerstein, Immanuel, et al. Open the
Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian
Commission on the Restructuring of the
Social Sciences. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford Univ. Pr. (Mestizo Spaces),
1996. 105p. alk. paper, $37.50 cloth.
ISBN 0-8047-2726-0. $10.95 paper.
ISBN 0-08047-2727-9. LC 95-45759.
Although the distance between the cov-
ers is not great, this book should play a
major role in setting the agenda for dis-
cussion on the future of the dominant
social science paradigm. Immanuel
Wallerstein, distinguished professor of
sociology, president of the International
Sociological Association, and director of
the Fernand Braudel Center for the
Study of Economics, Historical Systems,
and Civilizations at the State University
of New York, Binghamton, is perhaps the
preeminent scholar of the social sci-
ences in relation to world systems and
their study. Wallerstein, along with ten
other scholars of world renown (six from
the social sciences, two from the natu-
ral sciences, and two from the humani-
ties), has brought to the fore several
consequential issues for deliberation
regarding the existing disciplinary
structure of the social sciences.
In the first section of this book, the au-
thors carefully outline the social and his-
torical construction of the social sciences
as a form of knowledge that was organized
around two separate antinomies—one be-
tween the past and the present, and the
second between the descriptive (nomoth-
etic) and the interpretive (idiographic) dis-
ciplines. Cartesian dualism, the heart of
contemporary inquiry, posited the bifurca-
tion between the human, metaphysical
world and the natural world. The Newtonian
view of this natural world saw the universe
operating like clockwork, mechanically tick-
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