reviews


 

600 College & Research Libraries November 1999 

tive action programs has had a negative 
impact on minority admissions. Its aban­
donment also affects enrollment; the 
number of minority applicants declines 
and some of those who are accepted 
choose to attend other institutions which 
may offer more welcoming environments 
and more students like themselves.  The 
reader is presented, in Chilling Admissions, 
with a substantive, research-based discus­
sion of an issue critical to academic librar­
ies.—Mark Winston, Rutgers University, 
New Brunswick, NJ. 

Digital Culture: Maximising the Nation’s 
Investment: A Synthesis of JISC/NPO 
Studies on the Preservation of Electronic 
Materials. Ed. Mary Feeney. London: 
British Library Board, 1999. 85p. (ISBN 
0-7123-4645-7). 

It has been clear for some time that in digi­
tal preservation matters the U.K. and 
Australian library and archival commu­
nities are well in advance of those in the 
U.S.A. This booklet emphatically marks 
the practical progress that Britain has 
made so far and is an essential framework 
for anyone working in the difficult area 
of digital preservation. Its eight chapters 

are related to the previous work of a num­
ber of U.K. agencies; the seven relevant 
studies are included in the brief bibliog­
raphy. (JISC is the Joint Information Ser­
vices Committee of the U.K. Higher Edu­
cation Funding Council, an outgrowth of 
the 1993 Follett Commission that articu­
lated the digital library needs for U.K. 
universities; NPO stands for the National 
Preservation Office.)

 We can be grateful to the Digital 
Archive Working Group (DAWG) and its 
chair Peter Fox for commissioning this 
progress report. Its collation of the cru­
cial studies over the past three years (none 
older than 1997) shows the remarkable 
speed with which important work can be 
done. This summary also displays one 
common characteristic of the varied study 
groups: the usefulness that each one 
found in taxonomy.

 The chapter on stakeholders describes 
potential interested parties (e.g., creators, 
rights-holders, providers, archivists, 
regulators) and the nature of their inter­
ests. The chapter on technological deci­
sions examines the major technological 
approaches: technology preservation, 
technology emulation, and data migra-

Statement of ownership, management, and circulation 
College & Research Libraries, ISSN 0010-0870, is published bimonthly by the Association of 
College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 
60611-2795. The editor is Donald E. Riggs, Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College Avenue, 
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33314-7796. Annual subscription price, $60.00. Printed in U.S.A. with sec­
ond-class postage paid at Chicago, Illinois. As a nonprofit organization authorized to mail at 
special rates (DMM Section 424.12 only), the purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this 
organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the 
preceding twelve months. 

Extent and nature of circulation 
(Average figures denote the average number of copies printed each issue during the preceding 
twelve months; actual figures denote actual number of copies of single issue published nearest 
filing date: September 1998 issue.) Total number of copies printed: average 12,888; actual 13,458. 
Sales through dealers, carriers, street vendors, and counter sales: none. Mail subscription: av­
erage 12,609; actual 12,721. Free distribution: average 38; actual 39. Total distribution: average 
12,647; actual 12,760. Office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: average 241; 
actual 698. Total: average 12,888; actual 13,458. 

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation 
(PS Form 3526, Sept. 1998) for 1999 filed with the 

United States Post Office Postmaster in Chicago, October 1, 1999. 



Book Reviews 601 

tion. Its table on “categories of digital re­
source” does not claim to be complete but 
is a most informative listing of currently 
encountered data types (data sets, struc­
tured texts, design data, presentation 
graphics, video recordings, and half a 
dozen more). In this table, the character­
istics of each are described; in a parallel 
table, recommended preservation strate­
gies are noted.

 Biting the bullet, there is a chapter on 
estimating costs of digital preservation. 
Few actual numbers are given—the main 
purpose is once again to taxonomize and 
comment on the cost elements of digital 
preservation: creation, selection, data 
management, resource disclosure, data 
use, data preservation, and rights.

 Picking up on the aggressive rescue 
concept from Preserving Digital Informa-
tion: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of 
Digital Information, the 1996 RLG/CPA 
study by Waters and Garrett (which the 
booklet handsomely acknowledges), 
there is a chapter on data rescue. How­
ever, the focus here is on technological 
and mechanical rescue (e.g., damaged 
Challenger spacecraft tapes), with little or 
no mention of the property or rights res­
cue needs noted in 1996. Another lack is 
the matter of authentication, or assurance, 
of data integrity, which is only treated as 
an intake matter and assumes no flaws 
or malfeasance in the preservation pro­
cess.

 The “life cycle” concept, developed by 
the Arts and Humanities Data Service for 
digital resources, is outlined in a chapter 
on best practices. Included is a taxonomy 
(again) of the various life cycle stages. 
Case studies describe how the University 
of London Computing Centre and the 
National Environment Research Council 
actually manage each stage of their data 
preservation practices. A final chapter on 
the management process analyzes the 
variety of tasks and subtasks required. A 
chapter on key recommendations follows; 
they are at a high level of abstraction in 
contrast to the remarkably detailed and 
concrete descriptions in the preceding 
chapters.

 From the title on, the booklet focuses 
on the U.K. case. Occasionally, a sentence 
does not ring true for Americans—such 
as “Most agencies agree that there should 
be national funding for the preservation 
of electronic resources”—attractive as it 
may sound. The challenge for the Digital 
Libraries Federation, the Research Librar­
ies Group, and other U.S. agencies that 
claim to be working in this area is to pro­
vide even preliminary studies such as the 
ones that resulted in this informative, au­
thoritative progress report. Since 1996, the 
American silence has been deafening.

 This well-edited booklet is handsome, 
but difficult to read due to the poor choice 
of light sans serif body type on reflective 
paper.—Peter Graham, Syracuse University. 

Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature. Eds. Julie 
Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey. Lon­
don & New York: Routledge, 1998. 2­
volume set, 857p. $290, alk. paper 
(ISBN 0-415-06808-8). LC 96-047907. 

A reader-friendly, ready-reference work 
that currently stands alone in its chosen 
niche, this encyclopedia is noteworthy for 
the large, distinguished group of estab­
lished scholars who have contributed 
signed articles to it. First conceived as a 
companion to Arabic literature, it retains 
some of that spirit in articles such as “the­
atre and drama, medieval,” “Africa, Ara­
bic literature in,” or “singers and musi­
cians,” articles that are often of more 
general interest than the purely bio­
graphical ones. Most entries have a help­
ful, brief bibliography, divided into two 
sections: “Text editions” and “Further 
reading,” with preference given to more 
accessible references, where possible in 
English. The two volumes share a single, 
adequate, but hardly exhaustive, index; 
a five-page glossary, which is too short to 
be of much use; and a set of chronologi­
cal tables, which curiously are limited to 
political rulers and therefore contain none 
of the authors or movements celebrated 
in the text. There are no illustrations of 
any kind. Photographs of recent authors 
would have been a nice addition. Al­
though there is a brief “cinema and lit­



 

602 College & Research Libraries 

erature” entry, which is written almost 
entirely as a summary of literary works 
that have been filmed, with only one di­
rector being named, the editors clearly do 
not perceive Arab cinema to be part and 
parcel of Arabic literary activity. 

Compared to even the new edition of 
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, this new and 
much shorter work is obviously more 
reader-friendly in terms of both the lay­
out of pages and the length of the entries, 
as well as through the elimination of fig­
ures not of literary interest. In addition, 
there are more entries for more recent 
authors than in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. 
Even with a 1998 publication date, how­
ever, the cutoff date for emerging authors 
was 1980. It seems inevitable that an 
online version will eventually be needed 
and that this work will form part of some 
larger database. The focus of this work 
on its selected realm of Arabic literature, 
ancient and modern, is both a strength 
and a weakness. If a would-be user does 
not know whether the subject person is 
Persian, Turkish, or Arab or actually a lit­
erary figure or perhaps a scientist, she or 
he will not know whether to consult it, 
although Persians writing in Arabic have 
been included as well as Arabs writing 
in French. 

If a much-less-expensive paper edition 
were available and perhaps limited to 
modern authors, whose coverage seems 
to be a major strength of this work, that 
smaller book might well be a student’s 
best friend when studying for an exami­
nation in Arabic literature in translation. 
In its current form, it will, instead, be of 
most use to instructors preparing a class, 
wondering at the last minute, for ex­
ample, whether Moulud Mammeri (1917– 
1989) was Algerian or Tunisian and wrote 
in French or Arabic. 

All of the many people associated with 
this labor of love are to be congratulated. 
It would have been interesting, however, 
to see what would have issued from them 
had they been given a longer leash in the 
form of more lines and encouraged to 
write only about figures and topics they 
found passionately engaging. If one rea-

November 1999 

son for the 1980 cutoff date was the edi­
tors’ fear of letting new authors into the 
canon prematurely, this encyclopedia 
constitutes a canon and stands as a state­
ment of the status of the study of Arabic 
literature among, primarily, English-lan­
guage scholars. The work contains a great 
quantity of carefully sifted, useful infor­
mation on Arabic literature and authors, 
but few pyrotechnics. In short, the edi­
tors and contributors may end up preach­
ing to the choir by providing information 
for those best able to discover it on their 
own in other sources, rather than finding 
new readers for Arabic literature.—Will-
iam Maynard Hutchins, Appalachian State 
University, Boone. 

Jones, Plummer Alston, Jr. Libraries, Im-
migrants, and the American Experience. 
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood (Contri­
butions in Librarianship and Informa­
tion Science, no. 29), 1999. 236p. $59.95, 
alk. paper (ISBN 0-313-30769-5). LC 98­
26439. 

“Bustling Queens [New York] Library 
Speaks in Many Tongues,” proclaimed 
the headline of a recent New York Times 
article on the nation’s busiest library sys­
tem. Describing collections that include 
Hindi newspapers, Chinese mystery nov­
els, Harlequin romances in Spanish, and 
Urdu potboilers (not to mention Men Are 
from Mars, Women Are from Venus in Chi­
nese), along with children’s story hours 
and English classes, the article captured 
the purposefulness and dynamism of the 
library system’s operations as they per­
tain to immigrant populations. The inter­
action between American public libraries 
and immigrant communities is, of course, 
not new; and some of its history may be 
found in Plummer Alston Jones Jr.’s 
thoughtful, well-documented new vol­
ume. It is nicely illustrated and contains 
a good index. 

Jones focuses on two particular eras in 
American immigration: the years of “free 
immigration,” from 1876 to 1924; and the 
time of “restricted immigration,” from 
1924 to 1948. Interspersed with general 
discussions of each period’s political cli­