BOOK REVIEWS Cohn, .John M., Kelsey, Ann L., and Fiels, Keith M. Planning lor Automation: A How-to-Do·lt Manual lor Librarians. New York: Neai-Schuman Publishers Inc., 1 992, 1 1 6 pp. As suggested by the sub-title, this is indeed a manual which attempts to set out in a systematic way, the steps required for planning a successful integrated automated library system. For the novice, it provides a good and fairly comprehensive list of terms and concepts which are common to automated library systems. The definitions given to these terms and concepts are written, for the most part, in simple 'layperson's' terms so that it is easy for anyone without a technological background to understand. The authors have described, in some detail, the logical steps involved in planning an integrated automated library system targeted at medium sized or smaller libraries. There is mention of the various options available such as systems developed ' in­ house', turnkey systems, or joining an existing automated'sys­ temor network. However, not much insight is given into the pros and cons of these systems. The reader would need to look elsewhere for a better understanding of these options. Six cost elements involved in the installation and operation of an automated system have been described, namely: • planning and consultation purchase of hardware and software telecommunication conversion of manual records into machine-readable form ongoing operating costs additions to the system hardware or software These are elements which must be considered in a successful automation project and so this section is valuable as a reminder. A useful basic checklist ofthe steps to follow when automat­ ing is divided into the various phases of the planning process. Eachofthese phases is divided by "goals" and "tasks" which help the reader to understand what is involved in each phase. The chapter on "Working With Consultants" is especially useful for the uninitiated. However, the information in this chapter is very sketchy and only touches briefly on how to deal with this very important, costly, and sometimes litigious aspect of library automation. The Basic Data Worksheet provides a good checklist of commonly needed data for a successful project. For example, this worksheet enumerates each kind of data to be collected from Education Llbrarl- • Vol 17, No.3 the various units of the library. Checklists are also provided for Functional and Technical Specifications, · Vendor Client Ques­ tion List, Shelflist Problems. A small but useful section deals with establishing priorities and provides a list of the kinds of questions that must be answered before deciding on the priorities. The section on Request for Proposal (RFP) gives a compre­ hensive list of the important items which must be part ofan RFP, as well as what to look for when evaluating a 'bid' . These checklists can all be tailored to fit a specific library's needs. A whole section devoted to the creation of a machine readable database discusses the importance of a well-constructed, well-maintained database. The authors examine retrospective conversion of the catalogue and give some valuable information on the methods and costs which must be taken into consideration to have a successful cost-effective retrospective conversion project. The processes for weeding of the collection before automation as well as the use of barcodes, are also outlined. The importance of'standards ' in a library automation project is given adequate coverage. The authors have also paid some attention to ' planning for the future' by pointing out that library automation is not a 'one-shot' proposition but is a process which evolves as computers and information technology change. While this book is not an indepth study of library automa­ tion, it is a good jump-off point from which to investigate library automation possibilities. The basic information on how to go about a library automation project can be used as a guide to automate any size library. It is also recommended as a good introductory text for those teaching library automation as it is a step-off point from which students can be motivated to explore the topic in greater depth. The bibliographies which are fairly up­ to-date also provide further reading into each of the topics described. Sylvia Piggott is a Lecturer in Library Automation, Concordia University Library Studies, Montreal, Canada and Manager of the Business I nformation Centre, Bank of Montreal. 25 - Azarmsa, Reza. Telecommunications: A Handbook for Educators. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1 993, 296 p., ISBN 0·31 53·0743·8. Telecommunications, a Handbook for Educators is book thirty in the Source Books on Education series from the Garland Reference Library of Social Science. It is primarily intended for educators and college students but it is certainly useful for anyone who has a desire to learn the basic terms and concepts used in the telecommunications field. Azarmsa begins his story with a discussion of the many telecommunications uses found within our corporations and institutions. Then he provides a historical perspective, beginning with the invention of the telegraph and progressing to the ever present microcomputer. Chapters three to five deal in non-technical language with the exchange of information over electronic highways formed by the coupling of microcomputers. These configurations, called net­ works, can be as simple as wiring together neighbouring comput­ ers in an office, or as complex as bridging millions of computers worldwide into a single communication system. It is not until chapter six that the discussion turns to the user and the potential uses of telecommunications for the educator. The author presents several ideas for teachers on how to integrate electronic mail, bulletin board services, and teleconferencing features into a school curriculum. A few case studies are dis­ cussed. The final chapters are of interest to readers who are respon­ sible for establishing and operating a telecommunications facil­ ity. Design considerations as well as management and security issues are covered. By and large, the author has succeeded in his bid to introduce the concepts and terms of the telecommuni­ cations industry to educators who have little or no training in the area. The non-technical informative writing style, along with uncluttered illustrations, are helpful in simplifying many of the discussions. For those wanting more information, each chapter is followed by a list of references and an Appendix of on-line educational databases appears at the back of the book. Brian Smalridge, Coordinator, at Media Services, Champlain Regional College, St. Lambert, Quebec, Canada. Biddle, Stanton F. Planning in the University l.ibrary (New directions In information management}. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1 992, 227 pp. (includes bibliographical references and index). ISBN 0·31 3·27788·5 ISSN 0887·3844. This is a well-researched and very informative book which more than fulfills its purpose - as an aid to those involved in the management of university libraries by placing academic library planning in an historical context, and by the analysis of such practice in major libraries. Stanton Biddle presents strategic planning as the tool to make libraries more responsive to outside influences and help prepare for change. He defines this management and organiza­ tional tool before presenting an in-depth historical review of the American academic library, and the application of management theory to libraries. Highlighted is the vital role of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) which led to the 1970 benchmark publication of the Booz, Allen and Hamilton study. Chapter 6 presents the empirical findings of the author's two surveys (1982-3 and 1990-1) of a group of American and Cana­ dian ARL universities which permitted the analyses of academic library planning documents. Recommendations include guide­ lines for the five basic areas of a library planning program as well as for further research into the role of stategic planning in the administration of academic libraries. Essential reading for library administrators and for profes­ sionals interested in the history and development of library planning. Marika Asimakopulos, a former high school teacher, is now a reference l i brar ian at the Physical Sciences & Engineering Library, McGil l University, Montrea l , Canada. lduoatlon Llbrarl- • Vol 17, No.3 Haycock, Ken. What Works: Research about Teaching and Learning through the School's Library Resource Center. Seattle, WA & Vancouver, BC: Rockland Press, 1 992, 232 pp. Much has been written on school libraries and the teacher­ librarian's role. This book is a valuable guide to doctoral disserta lions on the topic of the instructional effectiveness of the school library and its teacher-librarian. The book is divided into three parts. The first part, called "What Works," lists the findings of research conducted through­ out North America (the US and to a minimal degree in Canada) on the five following topics: resource center program; professional staffing; learning resources; administration of the resource center; school and district leadership and support. Each of the topics has more specific subtopics for which research findings are stated and comments included. The find­ ings are supported by bibliographies of dissertations written on the subtopic. These bibliographies vary in length from three to eleven references. The second part of the book, "Sources," lists alphabetically by author all the dissertations used to support the research findings in the first part of the book. Full bibliographic refer­ ences, including the number of pages, are given. Information is included on the availability of dissertations complete with order numbers. (Almost all the dissertations are available; only a handful, mostly from the 1940s, are not.) Furthermore, the locations of abstracts and/or synopses of dissertations are given. A helpful feature is short comments containing the essence of each dissertation. In all 586 dissertations are listed. Mr Haycock, who has written texts on school librarianship and learning and has compiled bibliographies of sources for teaching in school libraries, states that he chose for this guide only doctoral disser­ tations since such works have been scrutinized for the quality of research. Part three of the book includes the following indexes: an author index with dissertation record number; a geographic index to the population studied; a topic index by broad topic, with subtopics under which the record numbers of dissertations are given and the authors' names in alphabetical order. These indexes permit quick retrieval of information on a particular topic or a particular geographic area. While most oft he research findings in this guide are obvious, for example, that "students in schools with well-equipped re­ search centers and professional teacher-librarians will perform better on achievement tests for reading comprehension and basic research skills," identifying the sources supporting such findings is a valuable feature, since teacher-librarians and educators seeking better funding can quote these sources to support their applications. Although a large number of the dissertations listed were written in the 1970s (the greatest amount of research in this field was done between 1%5 and 1970) the findings are as true today as they were then, and they can be applied to any country. For these reasons this book will be a worthwhile addition to any school, public or university library where teachers and teacher­ librarians are being trained. Tess Troide, Legal Librarian at Canadian Pacific Rai l , Mon­ treal, Quebec. Nielsen, Don L.F. Humor in American Literature: A Selected Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, 1 992. USBN 0·8240·8395·4 Hdcv $78.00 Nielsen's Humor inAmerican Literature: A SelectedAnno­ tated Bibliography contains almost thirteen hundred short - under two hundred and fifty words - synopses of secondary works about humor in American Literature. The humorous materials were published from shortly after the Puritans arrived in 1620 until about 1990. The book is divided into sixteen chapters. The first four include synopses of writings about individual authors who pub­ lished from the 17th century until now. These few chapters contain more than 85 percent of all the materials summarized in the book. Other chapters focus on particular aspects of humor in American literature, as follows: "black" or "gallows" literature; children's and adolescent literature; humor in ethnic literature; geography; history; oral literature; parody; poetry; political humor; satire; sex -role humor; and humor theory. These twelve chapters, 75 percent of those in the book, contain fewer than 15 percent of Education Llbrarl- • Vcl 17, No.3 its annotations. Some chapters are disappointingly skimpy; for example, the chapter on "humor theory" includes only eight items. Nilsen advises the reader that his decision about what materials to include "was not determined by the significance of the author or the signifance of the author's writing, but rather by the significance of the author's writing in the field of humor studies" (p.l). Consequently, some important writers, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edith Wharton, are not the subject of any of the materials annotated in the book. However, several other authors who are scarcely known for their sidesplitting humor are nonetheless represented, such as William Dean Howells (six items), Emily Dickinson (five), Henry James (five), Hawthorne (three), Emerson (two) and even Cotton Mather (two). The items annotated are chosen from tWo types of sources. The first is anthologies that include entries about many American 27 - humorists, such as Carl Holliday's Wit and Humor of Colonial Days (1975), Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill 's (ed.by),American Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978), and Steven H. Gale's (ed. by), Encyclopedia of American Humorists (1988). The second is books, chapters, articles and reviews whose titles usually indicate that they focus on humor. Humor in American Literature includes far more items about Mark Twain (eighty­ five) that about any other author. However, many writers who have created a large and distinguished comic oeuvre are given relatively short shrift, such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth (eight items each). Vladimir Nabokov, the distinguished author whose Lolita and Pale Fire are among the great comic novels of this century, is the subject of only five i terns. Moreover, some writers who have produced a much less distinguished body of comic work than Nabokov are the subject of as many or almost as many entries. Erma Bombeck, for example, is the subject of five, and Hunter Thompson, John Kennedy Toole and John Irving are each the subject of four. This book, clearly the result of an enormous amount of work, is useful in giving the reader brief synopses of some thirteen hundred items, published in hundreds of widely scattered and often difficult-to-find sources, by writers who flourished over some three hundred and fifty years. This work has two major shortcomings : most of the items included have been published since 1980, and a large majority since 1970. Thus the �nsiderable body of writing published before 1970 on American humorous literature is mostly ignored. Furthermore, Nilsen is· far more successful in summarizing his texts' points, than in providing any sense of their most important arguments and overarching themes. David Webster is Associate Professor of Educational Administra­ tion and Higher Education, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, U.S.A. Lecca, Pedro .J., and Watts, Thomas D. Preschoolers and Substance Abuse: Strategies for Prevention and Intervention. New York: The Haworth Press, 1 993. 1 1 2 p. ISBN 1 -56024·235·3. As the mother of young children, the title of this book filled me with trepidation. I had visions of three-year-olds popping pills; of mainlining four-year-olds. In fact, this slim but well­ researched volume addresses the needs of an often-overlooked population: preschoolers who live within substance-abusipg families. Preschoolers, unlike older children, are uniquely dependent upon their primary care-givers for their health and welfare. They are, therefore, the group most likely to be affected by their parents ' substance abuse. They are also at the most critical age for family intervention strategies designed to prevent later substance abuse. The authors ' thorough review of the literature reveals that little attention has been paid to preschoolers within substance­ abusing families as a separate group, despite their obviously different needs and role within the family. There has also been little research evaluating the effectiveness of various school and community prevention programs for children. (It must be noted here, however, that most of the studies cited by the authors have publication dates in the mid-1980's or even earlier). Substance-abusers - including parents - are character­ ized by a sense of powerlessness, low self-esteem, poor interper­ sonal and social skills, poor academic or vocational perform­ ance, negative peer pressure, and poor family relations. Since the quality of the parent-child relationship appears to be an impor­ tant variable in determining whether a child will use drugs, prevention and intervention strategies must include the parents as well as their children. The structural family system approach appears to hold promise for application to the substance-abusing family. Children also need prevention programs that are developmentally appropriate and sensitive to the cultural context within which they live. Children in poor and minority families are more likely to have a parent or parents who are substance abusers, and to become abusers themselves. Lecca and Watts are particularly - 28 sensitive to the needs of minority children and their families for effective and culturally-appropriate intervention and prevention strategies, and the current lack of appropriate services within the health and social services communities. In the last chapter, the authors acknowledge that substance abuse among families of preschool children is not likely to be eradicated. They recommend a holistic approach to treatment which they believe will significantly reduce the problem. Their recommendations include increasing child-care services within substance abuse treatment programs and early identification of substance abuse problems through demographic studies and maternal and infant service delivery systems. They advocate prevention/intervention programs which are community-based, use a structural family system approach, focus on wellness, involve other community agencies which address issues corre­ lated to substance abuse, and reach out to specific populations traditionally ignored in treatment plans - i.e., minorities and women. Research and policy considerations should include at­ tention to the long-term effects of intrauterine exposure to drugs and alcohol, more research-based substance abuse education programs for preschoolers and youth, insurance coverage for chemical dependency treatment, and a public health model of substance abuse and addiction. Despite the lack of current citations from the literature, this book succeeds in setting the framework and raising the important questions related to the needs of preschoolers in chemically­ dependent families. As such, it is an important contribution to the field, and should be of interest to all practitioners who work with children and their families. Christine Hamilton-Pennell is the Director, Resource Center Colorado Department of Education. Education LlbrariM • Vol 17, N ... 3 Hartley, David. Understanding the Nursery School. London: Cassell, 1 993, 1 63 pp. US $1 7.65 pa. ISBN 0·304-32584·8. David Hartley is a lecturer in education at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Through non-participant observation, he con­ ducts a sociological investigation during the 1980's of three Scottish nursery schools in different socio-economic areas rang­ ing from working-class to middle-class. Central to the theme of his work is how contemporary bureaucratic society affects pre­ school education. As Hartley points out, "Nurseries try to recon­ cile a contradiction: how they can retain the innocence and freedom of the individual child in an age which bears witness to an ever-expanding institutionalization and standardization of society." Specifically, the author analyses the evolution of the defini­ tion of childhood and presents the empirical part of his study by considering how time, space and the activities in nursery school are central to bureaucracy. The author argues that the effects of both U.S. education programs that focus on evaluation, and measurement of outcomes and Piagetian developmental psy­ chology, dominate the processes of education and therefore focus heavily on the preparation of children for a bureaucratic society. Hartley calls for a policy review for early education to answer the question "why do we need nursery education?" He believes that it might become compulsory and to leave this question unanswered discounts " .. the fact that early education is a social endeavor, with social and political effects at the societal level." The author need not look for the answers to "why do we need nursery education." Demand has increased over the past few decades because of the increasing employment rate of mothers. Also, several studies have found evidence that good early child­ hood programs for those living in poverty produce long-term benefits in quality of life. A more beneficial and realistic call from Hartley would be the development of quality curriculum and teacher education programs. The interesting and provocative analysis found in Under­ standing theNurserySchool is of particularrelevance to practicing teachers, students of teacher education, and other professionals involved with pre�school and child-care. It is recommended for all academic collections which support education or family and consumer science programs. Also of interest is the author' s previous work The Sociology of the Primary School, 1985, Croom Helm. Reviewed by Deanna Britton, Education Bibliographer and Head of the Social Sciences Department, The University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, GA. Woolum, .Janet. Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They are and How They Influenced Sports in America. Phoenlz, AZ: Oryx Press, 1 992, 279 pp. ISBN 0-8352·3021 -:X. This book is a very good attempt to pull together data which is often difficult to find. The information is timely, presented in a concise manner and efficiently indexed for quick access. In the first part of the book, one chapter offers a narrative history of women's sports in America focusing on the female experience in competitive sports at the collegiate, amateur and professional levels. A chronological list of women's sporting milestones is included. Chapter two covers the women's Olym­ pic program with the focus on American women, although outstanding international female athletes also receive recogni­ tion. The major body of the volume includes biographical essays of about 60 athletes in 19 sports, spanning years from the late nineteenth century through 1991, who in some way influenced the participation and development of women's sports in America. Part three includes a selected annotated bibliography, by sport, and a directory of sports organizations and foundations that promote women's sports in the United States. The final section lists award winners and women champi­ ons, includes a complete list of Olympic medal winners, winners of major championships, the Boston and New York Marathons and more. The vocabulary used in the text suggests that the book is aimed at a young audience, elementary school through high Eduoatlon Llbrarl- • Vol 17, No.3 school and for general audiences such as public libraries, but the wealth of factual .information which can be found in the publica­ tion makes it a worthwhile addition to a college library having an interest in sport. One disappointment is the black and white photographs which are not annotated other than a credit to the source. In one case, I was not able to distinguish which of two people in a picture was the one being written about. There are omissions too, such as not including any females from pairs figure skating with the figure skaters. The binding of the volume is not particularly sturdy for heavy reference use. The tone of the work stresses the tough challenges faced by female athletes trying to gain recognition as professionals in a male dominated field. The book is well worth reading to get such a good summary of the struggle. Elizabeth Winiarz, Information Specialist, Computerized Litera­ ture Search Service, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. H-