98

Book Reviews

The 21st Century Black Librarian in Amer-
ica: Issues and Challenges. Eds. Andrew 
P. Jackson, Julius C. Jefferson Jr., and 
Akilah S. Nosakhere. Lanham, Md.: 
Scarecrow Press, 2012. 277p., $80.00 
(ISBN 9780810882454). LC 2011-042051. 

The powerful legacy of librarian, mentor, 
and activist Dr. E.J. Josey (1924–2009) 
permeates and inspires this collection of 
essays addressing the diverse and mul-
tifarious concerns of the black librarian 
in America. This edition, which follows 
two earlier versions edited by Josey in 
1970 and 1994, begins with a dedication 
to Josey, a selected bibliography of his 
works, and a tribute to him by the Black 
Caucus of the American Library Associa-
tion (BCALA). Indeed, Josey influences 
every page in this comprehensive volume 
with his work providing inspiration and 
guidance to black librarians in America. 

With 47 chapters and eight parts, this 
wide-ranging collection offers a varied 
and prolific assortment of essays related 
to black librarianship in America. The 
unifying theme of this collection is that, 
despite the hard work and accomplish-
ments of black librarianship’s preeminent 
activists and scholars, such as Josey, there 
still remains much work to be done, “glass 
ceilings to be shattered, closed doors 
to be opened.” Activism against racism 
in America remains as relevant as ever, 
and the 21st-century generation of black 
librarians is encouraged to continue the 
work of Josey and others: “Our respon-
sibility to ancestor warriors and elders 
has not yet been fulfilled.” Racism in the 
profession of librarianship continues to 
obstruct recruitment of black librarians 
to the field and their advancement in the 
profession. 

Part I focuses on the school library. As 
the introduction notes, “all are in agree-
ment that students with low academic 
skills typically come from schools with 
poorly equipped school libraries.” Part II 

addresses issues in the pub-
lic library. Themes explored 
in this section include the 
financial difficulties faced 
by public libraries in dif-
ficult economic times and 
the centrality of the public 
library to the community as a safe place 
for all people, from job seekers to the 
homeless, to seek assistance and refuge. 
Part III discusses black librarianship in 
terms of the academic library. A variety 
of perspectives from the academic library 
are presented. Part IV focuses on the 
special library. The chapters presented 
here address health sciences and medical 
librarianship and private institutional li-
braries. Part V discusses state and federal 
libraries, and Part VI addresses issues in 
the library and information school: both 
sections contain important essays about 
recruitment and retention of black librar-
ians in the profession. Part VII focuses 
on library technology and its impact on 
librarianship and information access. Ac-
cess to Africana collections in historically 
black colleges and universities (HBCUs) is 
one such topic addressed in this section. 
Finally, Part VIII, “Issues and Profiles,” is 
a diverse mélange of essays that discuss 
“challenges that have plagued librarian-
ship for decades.” 

This volume is highly recommended 
for collections concerned with diversity 
in librarianship, the history of the field 
of librarianship, the education of library 
professionals, and activism in the profes-
sion.—Maria T. Accardi, Indiana University 
Southeast.

Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo. UContent: The 
Information Professional’s Guide to 
User-Generated Content. Medford, N.J.: 
Information Today, 2012. 340p., $49.50 
(ISBN 9781573874250). LC2011-043838. 

From blogs to podcasts to Facebook, in-
formation professionals of all stripes have 



Book Reviews 99

been aware for years now of the “social” 
components of Internet content and how 
much is currently driven by user-generat-
ed content. In UContent, Nick Tomaiuolo, 
a library practitioner and instructor of 
LIS research methods, offers a “shortcut 
guide” for librarians and information 
professionals in a variety of posts to the 
plethora of platforms and tools that can 
use the huge base of “Citizen marketers” 
(to borrow another term from the litera-
ture on user-generated Web content) for 
our work as librarians. 

Tomaiuolo is not just giving us a book 
on fads in cyberspace. His text notes both 
in the introduction and the conclusion 
the large numbers of Internet users who 
contribute to user-generated content and 
the faith that Internet users can place 
on such content. Tomaiuolo offers both 
success stories for information profes-
sionals (such as the extremely fruitful 
collaboration between the U.S. Library 
of Congress and the Flickr Commons to 
make historical images freely available 
on the web) and cautionary tales (such as 
the efforts of volunteer mapmakers from 
India for an early Google project to cre-
ate maps that showed Pakistan as part of 
their country). Throughout, though, the 
focus of his text is more on introductory 
description to each tool and a “shortcut 
guide” to how each might be helpful to 
the work of librarians and information 
professionals. 

Each chapter of the book takes a differ-
ent platform or type of tool, gives a brief 
history of how it has been used both by li-
braries and other parts of the information 
world, and often provides some examples 
of how simple the basic technical steps 
for a setup can be. From Project Guten-
berg (which the author almost deifies 
but justly describes as one of the oldest 
user-generated content sites on the web), 
through the blogosphere, to Wikis and 
podcasts, UContent offers good overall 
histories of the platforms, quite fair criti-
cism of the content as it stands (such as 
the multiplicity of user contributions to 
Wiki sites), but also excellent examples of 

how specific library websites are already 
using the tools. Tomaiuolo asks directly 
if a library should have and maintain a 
Facebook site, but then he presents a very 
cautious and fair reading of the literature 
about how students consider library Face-
book friending. One of the most pertinent 
sections to librarians might be the chapter 
on the variety of book review sites from 
Amazon and LibraryThing on that can 
be available to librarians; this excerpt is 
a prime example of how the chapter’s list 
of familiar and less-than-familiar review 
websites can help each reader to find new 
resources in this arena. 

The chapters on self-publishing and 
citizen journalism are perhaps of less 
value to many librarians, though the 
information trends are still very active 
and Tomaiuolo’s placing of each in the 
context of Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” 
of information access make both still 
quite pertinent to the overall topic of 
user-generated content. Perhaps the most 
interesting chapter for librarians is To-
maiuolo’s treatment of tagging and “folk-
sonomies.” Once again, the author gives 
some context for the potential importance 
of this kind of content—user-generated 
subject terms—in connecting users with 
the “Long Tail” of information resources 
by their own terms that could contain 
pertinent information beyond Library of 
Congress of Dewey Subject Headings. At 
the same time, the text offers a fair hear-
ing to common critiques of tagging such 
as the lack of professional oversight and 
the number of unique tags on sites such 
as Flickr that are typos or very personal 
in orientation (the “vacation” tag). The 
overall argument is for better use of ag-
gregated tag clouds and for a judicious 
combination of user-generated and 
librarian-generated subject terms. 

The final chapters deal with somewhat 
newer players in this UContent space: 
custom search engines, in which users 
can create and share pieces of code that 
routinely execute custom topic searches; 
cyber-maps, in which librarians can use 
maps to group local and historical infor-



100 College & Research Libraries January 2013

mation; and Yahoo Pipes, a new kind of 
website-embeddable feed for searching 
a variety of online sources. Each of these, 
and Flickr (already noted for its strong 
work with the Library of Congress, the 
Getty, and fifty other information science 
nonprofit sources in the Flickr Commons), 
all have good potential that Tomaiuolo 
notes for applications in the provision of 
information to patrons. 

Overall, the volume could be a bit more 
comprehensive than any single librarian 
might need; the catalog of tools available 
can be daunting. At the same time, we all 
should be following each of the trends 
Tomaiuolo charts and thinking outside 
the box of traditional reference provision. 
Each chapter of the book is not only full of 
basic information, but most chapters also 
contain interview transcripts with leaders 
in the field on the topic of a particular tool 
(such as Karen Schneider, Walt Crawford, 
and Meredith Farkas), or comparative 
tables of different web services that serve 
one of the user content needs above, or 
specific examples of libraries who are 
benefiting from a user-generated content 
service. Whichever tool(s) seem best for 
your particular institution, UContent can 
serve as a reference librarian’s reference 
in the brave new world that we inhabit.—
Timothy J. Dickey, Kent State University.

Joan R. Kaplowitz. Transforming In-
formation Literacy Instruction Using 
Learner-Centered Teaching. New York: 
Neal-Schuman, 2012. 326p., $75 (ISBN 
9781555707651). LC2011-041991.

The well-worn saying, “Tell me and I will 
forget, show me and I may not remem-
ber, involve me and I will understand,” 
quoted as the epigraph to Chapter 10 of 
Transforming Information Literacy Instruc-
tion Using Learner-Centered Teaching, sums 
up the learner-centered teaching method 
explicated and advocated by author Joan 
R. Kaplowitz’s informative book. Ac-
cording to Kaplowitz, the key difference 
between learner-centered and traditional 
teaching methods is who controls the 
learning process: “Traditional teaching 

puts control in the hands of the teacher 
and views him or her as the dispenser of 
information and knowledge. In the learn-
er-centered approach, power, control, and 
responsibility for learning is shared by 
everyone involved—teacher and learners 
alike. Learners actively construct or create 
their own knowledge.” 

This book provides a useful, if pre-
dominantly theoretical, introduction 
to Learner-Centered Teaching (LCT) 
for librarians looking to improve their 
information literacy instruction. As it 
synthesizes a large body of research on 
educational theory, learning styles, and 
teaching and assessment activities, it 
would also make an excellent textbook 
for a library science course on user in-
struction. Each chapter concludes with 
a summary, study questions, annotated 
bibliography, and references that the 
library science professor could easily use 
as the basis for assignments and class 
discussions.

The author, who spent twenty-three 
years as a librarian at UCLA before retir-
ing as Head of the Research, Instruction 
and Collection Services Division of that 
university’s biomedical library, holds a 
doctorate in Psychology in addition to 
her Master of Library Science degree. 
She has worked with the ACRL Infor-
mation Literacy Immersion Program 
(1999–2004) and the steering committee 
for UCLA’s Library Information Literacy 
Initiative (2001–2003). Several chapters 
were cowritten with Hillary Kaplowitz, 
an instructional designer in the Faculty 
Technology Center at University of Cali-
fornia, Northridge. The writing is grace-
ful but informal, often conversational, 
and reads as an invitation to explore the 
principles and uses of learner-centered 
teaching along with the author(s).

The book is divided into three sections. 
Part I, “Finding Out about Learner-Cen-
tered Teaching,” outlines the characteris-
tics of LCT. At its core, LCT emphasizes 
“collaboration, participation, and shared 
responsibility for learning among all par-
ticipants” and emphasizes teaching meth-