Book Reviews 297 texts, and still purchased manuscript “publications.” Dover rightly describes the early modern period as a “new age of manuscript” instead of simply as an “age of print” (181). Chapters 6 and 7 look at how increasing levels of paper contributed to changing views of the natural world and of the self. Naturalists’ combination of observation, description, and reading generated a range of note-taking techniques—loose-leaf manuscript reading notes, paper notebooks, and commonplace books—designed to augment the memory. Men and women across various social classes and professions exchanged letters and began to produce what Jacques Presser has called ego-documents, things like diaries, travel narratives, spiritual reflections, and family books. In scientific and domestic spheres, then, Europeans had a “pre- servative instinct” (242) that transformed them into managers of information. For this reason, Dover favours an information revolution over a scientific one and sees increasing levels of correspondence as an epistolary revolution. No book can possibly cover everything about paper in early modern Europe, but Dover glosses over two important areas worth highlighting. Throughout his book, writing and managing information is primarily an urban affair. Beyond one brief reference to the Tus- can peasant Benedetto (243), most Europeans, who were illiterate and would not have had mounds of papers in their homes, are largely absent from his discussion. Dover understands the complementary relationship between textuality and orality and notes how notaries con- nected the illiterate to written culture, but he fails to explain in detail the roles peasants (who are absent from the index) participated in the information revolution and how they were influenced by it. Dover also fails to adequately address the relationship between information manage- ment and empire building. He draws on a few examples from the Spanish empire, but he overlooks what I would call—drawing on the work of Walter Mignolo—the “darker side” of paper. European forms of paper expanded as European empires fanned across the globe and destroyed alternative forms of record keeping among various Indigenous communities. In their place, European missionaries, churchmen, and colonial officials jotted down notes and published a wide range of observations about local cultures that in several cases were only available in Europe. The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe is a helpful synthesis of many of the changes that took place in the information landscape of early modern Europe. Scholars of the early modern period, information science, and printing will need to read this book. Under- graduate and graduate students will appreciate Dover’s connections between the past and the present as digital technologies have made “archivists and information mangers out of us all” (283). — Jason Dyck, University of Western Ontario Community College Library: Reference and Instruction. Janet Pinkley and Kaela Casey, eds. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, 2022. 317 p. Softcover, $98.00. ($88.20 ALA members) (ISBN: 978-0-8389-3768-6). The Community College Library: Reference and Instruction is the next in a series of collected works aimed at increasing research and scholarly writing specific to community college libraries. Along with another recently released collection on assessment, CCL: Reference and Instruction highlights a wide range of teaching strategies, outreach efforts, critical looks at practice in the community college, and partnership opportunities. Each of the twenty-four chapters is relatively short and infused with both informal anecdotes and ties to the greater body of in- 298 College & Research Libraries March 2023 formation literacy research. In many ways, this mix of academic insight and informal creativity embodies community college librarianship itself. A discussion of the community college environment is a common theme in the first few chapters. The lack of research done by community college librarians is in stark contrast to the number of community college students in the United States. Research and publication are often not high on the list of community college librarians’ responsibilities, and even when they are, most community college librarians simply do not have the time to conduct research and publish their findings due to chronic understaffing and other responsibilities. Meanwhile, community college librarians serve roughly one-third of all college students in the United States, and their voices are a critical component of the academic library conversation. Due to the lack of time and focus on publishing research, they often go unheard in the academic landscape. Another thread throughout the chapters is description and analysis of the complex lives of community college students and how that lived experience can be incorporated into reference and instruction work. This work is perhaps the most valuable contribution found in this col- lection: community college librarians have found incredibly creative ways to engage students in research while acknowledging their lived experiences as first generation, non-traditional, undocumented, or homeless, just to list a few of the many aspects of community college stu- dents’ lives. In one chapter, the authors note that 40 percent of their college’s student body is under the age of eighteen. In another, the authors state that 65 percent of their student body is part-time. In a third, a community college with 10,000 students and eight locations has some campuses with no library or no full-time librarian. It is not uncommon to hear a community college student say that they have never written a research paper before. The role of community college librarians is critical in closing the knowledge gap and preparing students to transfer and continue their academic journey. In each of these chapters, authors find creative solu- tions to meet the needs of their unique situations. Stepping back and taking in the volume as a whole, any reader will see how challenging the work of community college librarians is and how valuable their roles are in supporting many of our country’s most vulnerable students. The collection also offers commentary on the ACRL Framework for Information Lit- eracy. Starting with a chapter analyzing the familiarity of the Framework to community college librarians, the collection addresses the ways librarians make the Framework func- tion for their students. Several articles center on practical activities or tools to help students connect Framework concepts to actual research projects. The subtext of these articles is the chronic underpreparedness of many community college students, another reality referenced throughout the collection. Several chapters detail community college librarians’ partnerships with faculty in credit-bearing courses. Librarian-taught, credit-bearing information literacy courses are also discussed as a way to ensure that students attain these critical skills. Authors at multiple institutions note the political and bureaucratic challenges in creating and gaining approval for these courses. This volume comes at an interesting time in history. So much has happened between when the book was finished and when it was published. One chapter details the need for critical thinking when evaluating medical information, but immediately predates the COVID pandemic. That article later goes on to discuss the authority of Dr. Oz as a medical resource without the foresight that he would later run for office. The authors do note that the pandemic Book Reviews 299 hit in the early stages of the project, but perhaps a revision of some of the chapters that directly relate to current events would have been beneficial. In many cases the content of this volume is as much aspirational as it is informational. This is not unexpected. Community college libraries are understaffed and lack resources such as robust institutional research offices. The brevity of many of the chapters is an asset to those looking for quick reads with tangible takeaways, though a research agenda/call to action concluding summary would have been appreciated. One only hopes that the title of the volume does not prevent academic librarians at four-year colleges and universities from also reading it: they too can benefit from a better understanding of this critical component of higher education, and perhaps that will lead to more partnership opportunities between two- and four-year academic librarians. — Jaime Hammond, Naugatuck Valley Community College Practicing Social Justice in Libraries. Alyssa Brissett and Diana Moronta, eds. New York: Routledge, 2022. 155 p. Paper, $39.95 (978-0-367-76490-6). The editors articulate the following guiding questions for this collection: What does diversity work look like in librarianship? How are librarians implementing social justice elements into their daily work? How are li- brarians protesting and resisting in their everyday work? While in some chapters I may have longed for a little more theoretical grounding or a clearer awareness of how these chapters connect with existing literature, these guiding questions provide a clear through-line for the collection as a whole. This book is made for those seeking practical yet challenging approaches to incorporating social justice into library work. I am a white, settler-descendent, disabled, queer/trans/non-binary librarian working in the ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. I want to acknowledge that these identities shaped my perspective as I read these chapters. The collection opens with three Black librarians who work in predominantly white insti- tutions sharing their observations about institutional responses to anti-Black racism and their survival strategies as they advocate for social change at their institutions (“Black Librarianship in the Times of Racial Unrest”). One of the themes from that chapter carries over to chapter 2: the importance of having BIPOC1-centered programs and networks to support those do- ing much of the heavy lifting to move conversations about social justice forward. A standout observation from this chapter references one of the presentations from the conference the librarians organized, in which archivist Joyce Gabiola argues that diversity research is “a panopticon to surveil POC, and diversity initiatives were institutional devices to control POC and protect whiteness” (22). Observations like this challenge dominant narratives about social justice research and practice, and exemplify the important work contained in this collection. Other authors discuss how to incorporate social justice into library programming (“Infor- mation Is a Two-Way Street” and “Bringing Diverse Library Exhibitions and Events to Life”), and how to incorporate sustainability into building design and student learning (“Environ- mental Equity for Students in the Library and LEED2 Buildings”). This last chapter would have benefited from more focus on sustainability conversations happening in the library profession. I truly could not tell if the authors were unaware of library sustainability movements and scholarship, or if they were deliberately not discussing them. (Is library sustainability culture a social justice nightmare and better left unmentioned? I don’t know! But now I’m very curious.)