Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, Perry Zurn and 
Dani S. Bassett, The MIT Press, 2022. 293p. Softcover, $22.95. 
9780262547147

It was upon reading the 1999 article, “The Invisible Substrate of Information 
Science” by renowned information science scholar, Dr. Marcia Bates, that 
something clicked in my understanding of the library field as a graduate 
student in my MSIS program. Bates described Information Science (as well 
as the disciplines of Education and Journalism) as a meta-discipline (1044). 
Compared to conventional disciplines, the meta-discipline cuts across the 
spectrum of various subjects, interested more in the processes than the content 
of each. Suddenly, I realized the reason all my peers and professors came 
from such varied academic and professional backgrounds. The common 
link was an interest in so many different fields. Specifically, we were curious 

about the invisible processes of information organization, retrieval, creation, and preservation 
that intersect with learning and human knowledge. While written in a manner inviting to any 
student, Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett’s Curious Minds holds a particularly unique perspective 
from which librarians and information professionals can find kinship and inspiration.

What new is there to say about curiosity? Zurn and Bassett challenge common under-
standings of curiosity as a purely acquisitional drive to fill an information gap. Instead, they 
present a much more compelling theory of curiosity as a practice of connection or knowledge 
network building in architectures of “(un)knowers, (un)knowledges, and things (un)known” 
(47). The authors bring a wealth of collaborative research to support this work. Provost Associate 
Professor of Philosophy at American University, Dr. Perry Zurn is also the author of Curiosity 
and Power: The Politics of Inquiry and has academic publications in the areas of political theory, 
transgender studies, and network science. Dr. Dani S. Bassett is J. Peter Skirkanich Professor 
of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania and a MacArthur Fellow whose research 
blends neural and systems engineering and intersects in psychology, visual arts, and more.

Accomplished, interdisciplinary scholars and twins, Zurn and Bassett themselves have 
curious minds. The book begins with an introduction that serves as an outline to ground the 
reader for the journey ahead and traces the authors’ own backgrounds and experiences with 
learning while discovering limitations the external world imposed upon their freedom of 
thinking. The equity and policing of curiosity as manifested in exclusion, access, privilege, 
and oppression based on gender, sex, race, ethnicity, ability, and class is central to the inquiry 
Zurn and Bassett excavate in Curious Minds. Throughout the book there is continual emphasis 
on the how of curiosity rather than the what. Though the authors pay attention to definitions of 
curiosity, the bulk of their study consists of an examination of its shapes, dimensions, move-
ment, and geometry through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, and network science. It 
would be easy for any authors to get lost in communicating these complex theories to a general 
audience, but Zurn and Bassett successfully distill and organize the information presented in 
their book. Admittedly recognizing that the narrative structure will not be straightforward, 
they lean into the meandering nature of curiosity, inviting readers to also indulge in curiosity 
with the book rather than about it.

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Book Reviews  365

Informed by their respective expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, the chapters alter-
nate primary authorship between Zurn and Bassett resulting in a refreshing exercise of the left 
and right sides of the brain. Yet, they maintain a wholly unified voice, likely due, in part, to their 
connection as twins. Each chapter blends into the next as the authors pick up where the other 
leaves off. Showing their scholarly brush strokes, they form and revise questions and develop 
new theories over the course of the text.

Neuroscience science may pose a steep learning curve for many librarians, as well as the 
average person. Yet, Bassett’s explanation of the field maintains a thoroughly humanist delivery. 
Providing multiple illustrations and playful metaphors, they provide a background on the origins 
of network science and current efforts to graph the architecture and movement of individual and 
collective knowledge. Writing, “the shape of knowledge is much like that of Swiss cheese … a 
flesh of knowns interwoven with pockets of unknowns,” they build upon this visual metaphor 
to introduce the concept of a network model (116-117). 

Zurn’s chapters shift from the scientific and material perspective of curiosity to its cultural 
history and conceptualization within philosophy and the humanities. Discerning the shapes 
knowledge networks take as they move from node to edge, he identifies three curiosity styles 
derived from figures in Western intellectual history: the busybody, the hunter, and the dancer. 
We may ourselves be familiar with these curious minds, those rambling and indulgent, others 
intensely narrow and focused, and some ingenious and artful. Individuals are not bound to 
one style but rather shift between them. Readers will also enjoy the Curious Bestiary found in 
the book’s appendix which expands upon the styles into which curiosity can morph; shapes 
that are not static.

The authors delve deeply into these various movements of curiosity through relational 
connections, knowledge network growth, kinesthetic shaping, and tour both the mind and 
material space. In the chapter, “Curiosity Takes a Walk,” the authors contemplate the humanist 
traditions of walking as a form of thinking and the reverse, looking at four types of walks: the 
philosophical, the spiritual, the environment, and the political. In this examination of traveling 
thought they flesh out maps and geographies of the mind and delve into how they are encoded 
in the brain. How does curiosity impact the neurological functions of learning and memory?

It is in these final two chapters where libraries, educators and students can find espe-
cially relevant and valuable reflection. The atmosphere in academic institutions and libraries 
is charged with pressure to police thinking and learning. While public libraries encounter 
increasing challenges to censor and restrict access to books and resources, academic librarians 
are tasked with teaching information literacy. Zurn and Bassett describe the brain’s capacity 
for flexibility and adaptation and how curiosity can result in conformational change. Could 
this process increase understanding of implicit bias and tolerance for ideas that conflict with 
deeply rooted belief systems? Could it expand the individual’s capacity as well as communi-
ties to adapt these systems across diverse identities?

Curious Minds reimagines spaces of education and possibilities for change in neural, 
social, and knowledge networks. Giving credit to communities that have engaged in this 
kind of curious practice long before and outside of the academia, the authors turn to the case 
studies of neurodivergent author, Naoki Higashida, the Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights 
era, and Indigenous knowledge systems. They critique the academy’s attachment to distinct 
knowledge structures and argue for a movement that allows for “flourishing ecosystems of 
knowledge” that focus on equity and liberation demonstrating a curiosity de-disciplined (213). 



366  College & Research Libraries March 2025

Curiosity engaged in what the authors describe as edgework, moves beyond filling infor-
mation gaps by making relational connections—and breaking them. Librarians are aware of 
imperfect information architectures and engage in efforts to change and work around them. 
Instructing students how they too can make unexpected discoveries if they change a keyword 
or simply open themselves to new ideas can bring about the possibility for knowledge network 
growth. As librarians themselves operate within a meta-discipline, how is a praxis of curiosity 
passed along to students and educational institutions? Could the invisible information struc-
tures navigated regularly be made visible and find advocates for system change? Zurn and 
Bassett provide answers but generates further questions about the nature of curiosity. There 
is a lighthearted and rebellious spirit at the heart of Curious Minds that affirms the power of 
these small divergences in the mind to crack open streams of new connections and curious 
futures. — Ginny Barnes, First Year Student Success Librarian, California State University, Fresno

Reference
Bates, Marcia J. “The Invisible Substrate of Information Science.” Journal of the American Society for Information 

Science, vol. 50, no. 12, 1999, pp. 1043–50. 

Supporting Student Parents in the Academic Library: Designing Spaces, Policies, and Services, 
Kelsey Keyes and Ellie Dworak, Association of College and Research Libraries, 2024. 312p. 
Softcover, 82.00. 9798892555531

It is clear from the first pages of this book that authors Keyes and Dworak 
care deeply about students who are also parents, an increasing population 
found on college campuses. Supporting Student Parents in the Academic Li-
brary opens with the authors’ own experiences observing student parents 
on their campuses and point out their relative invisibility, both in physical 
spaces, consideration in policies, and in the data collected at higher edu-
cation institutions. They note “our point is to highlight the fact that a lack 
of data being collected about students’ parenting status renders them less 
visible, and thus this group continues to be underserved” (xviii). While 
some chapters may digress into a discussion of higher education in more 

general terms rather than focusing on the library, ultimately the book is a detailed, timely, 
and thoughtful consideration of students who are parents, providing helpful tips on how 
academic libraries can support this often-ignored set of scholars.

The book is divided into four parts, thirteen chapters, with the authors describing their 
work as “part toolkit, part treatise, and part call to action” (xxi). Each chapter opens with 
several learning objectives which provide scope and overview to the subject matter. Chapters 
close with discussion questions to encourage further thinking on how information might be 
relevant to readers and their campus libraries. Part 1 provides a summary of the scant data 
that is currently collected about student parents enrolled in higher education as well as the 
challenges these students are likely to encounter. Through this examination the reader is given 
a bleak picture of higher education reporting regarding student parents and of the data that 
any researcher working with this population must piece together through various reporting 
agencies. The authors’ data gathering resulted from a survey at Boise State University and 
offers a glimpse at how many students are parents, the challenges they face, and what support 
might help them graduate (xv). The answers to the questions of “why” were missing and still 
need consideration. Part 2 focuses on what the authors’ study did not address and pushes