reviews 96 College & Research Libraries January 1997 96 Book Reviews Baldwin, David A. The Academic Lib- rarian’s Human Resources Handbook. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlim- ited, Inc., 1996. 167p. $28.50. (ISBN 1-56308-345-0.) LC 96-19888. With this book, David Baldwin joins the ranks of numerous authors who have offered personnel management guid- ance to members of the library profes- sion. In this somewhat crowded field, his work emerges as a thorough, au- thoritative, and easy-to-use manual which will be of value to fledgling and experienced library managers alike, and particularly to anyone whose insti- tution has not developed an adequate human resources handbook of its own. Baldwin is Director of Administrative Services at the University of New Mexico General Library. The purpose of his book, as he states in his introduc- tion, is “to provide the busy library man- ager basic information and background on employee rights and legal param- eters of managing library personnel.” The book begins with an overview of the functions of human resources man- agers, after which it focuses on the le- gal aspects of human resources man- agement in chapters 2 through 10. The author is particularly concerned with assisting those of us, whether novice or experienced managers, who have a dif- ficult time keeping up with changes in the legal rights and responsibilities of employers and employees. However, because he is aware that a great many librarians have no formal management training, he uses his final chapter to ad- vise us on good management practice by analyzing examples of real human resource management dilemmas that illustrate the issues raised in the pre- ceding chapters. Although some of Baldwin’s advice may strike a few readers as being obvi- ous and plain common sense, it is wisdom that is often ne- glected when managers and employees become involved in sticky personnel matters. Baldwin examines nearly every category of important human resource management issues, as may be seen from some of his chap- ter titles: “Recruitment and Selection of Personnel”; “The Employment Rela- tionship”; “Wage and Hour Laws”; “Em- ployee Benefits”; “Discrimination Laws”; “Health, Safety, and Privacy”; “Discipline and Discharge”; “Income Replacement”; “What to Do before You Phone the Attorney.” The only omission that concerns me involves dual employ- ment or “moonlighting.” Is the lack of discussion of moonlighting an oversight, or is it no longer an issue that leads some supervisors to impose restrictions that potentially violate employee rights? The author has taken care to make it easy for readers to find where to look in this handbook for needed information. It is well indexed, has a thorough table of contents, and is divided into chapters that group personnel issues appropri- ately. Further, the level of detail Baldwin provides about personnel management issues and laws is well suited to a hand- book: the information is just deep and lengthy enough that in only a few min- utes the reader can glean the essentials and understand the relevant laws and principles without getting bogged down in unfamiliar jargon or confusing legal technicalities. For those who wish to in- vestigate the issues further, he includes lengthy bibliographies at the end of each chapter. Baldwin writes lucidly and provides clear, concise explanations of human re- source management terms and con- cepts, both within the text and in the fine Book Reviews 97 appended glossary. His overview of “disparate treatment” on pages 60 and 61 is an excellent example of the skill with which he summarizes laws and prin- ciples governing personnel matters. As part of his discussion, Baldwin offers a number of useful lists contain- ing important precepts, tendencies to avoid, warning signs of potential prob- lems, steps to be taken under certain circumstances, and so on. Particularly noteworthy lists are “Steps to Take be- fore Terminating an Employee,” the summary of traits that employees like least about their managers and the at- titudes necessary to be a good man- ager. In short, this is an exemplary work with which I can find few faults. Of course, a handbook dealing with legal matters will inevitably include some information that becomes outdated quickly. For example, Baldwin tells us the minimum wage is $4.25 per hour, but subsequent to his book’s publication, Congress has passed a minimum wage increase. Nev- ertheless, in my view the important management and legal principles and guidance the author dispenses will never be obsolete.—W. Bede Mitchell, Ap- palachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. Lacy, Dan. From Grunts to Gigabytes: Com- munications and Society. Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1996. 193p. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-252-02228-9); $13.95 pa- per (ISBN 0-252-06531-X). LC 95- 32512. Few would find fault with the statement that begins Dan Lacy’s latest book on communications and society: “the pat- terns of skills and technologies with which humans have been able to com- municate have profoundly affected the societies in which they have lived.” From the moment the first words were spoken between two humans, modes of communication in society have affected the creation and distribution of power, the structuring of society, and “our in- ternal perceptions of reality.” From Grunts to Gigabytes is a concise, well-written synthesis of what is known of the emergence of communication systems in Western society. Beginning with the human capacity for speech and its transformation into communities held together by orality, Lacy traces the history of communication in European and Anglo-American cultures along a single line: from oral to written culture, and from writing to printing, and the emergence of new media in the late 1800s through the twentieth century. He is at his best in his lucid discussion of the impact of print on Western society and its endurance during the modern era of audiovisual and electronic me- dia. Of greater consequence, From Grunts to Gigabytes is more of a provocative treatise on the relationship between communication and power in society than it is a history of the book. Lacy’s portrayal of the impact that new and emergent technologies have had on the public sphere are central to his thesis. From one chapter to the next, he illus- trates how power is associated with ac- cess and control of new forms of com- munication. Although he does not allege that access and control of communica- tion systems necessarily create power, there is a convincing argument pre- sented for the centrality of communi- cation as a tool for empowerment, and this is evident throughout his analysis of the interaction between communica- tion and public policy. For instance, Lacy considers the relationship between church and state in fifteenth- and six- teenth-century Europe in regulating and licensing printers and, by extension, controlling what was actually published. When discussing the appearance of audiovisual media in the twentieth cen- tury, he also uses government (Federal Communications Commission) and in- dustry (Motion Picture Association of << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /All /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Warning /CompatibilityLevel 1.3 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 1 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness false /PreserveHalftoneInfo true /PreserveOPIComments false /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts false /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages false /ColorImageMinResolution 151 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 151 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.10000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 600 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.16667 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ENU (IPC Print Services, Inc. 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