College and Research Libraries Recent Publications 565 new fields of knowledge develop and the world's political boundaries are rede­ fined. The Library of Congress system can in­ terpolate new sections of numbers, while changes in the Dewey system are often re­ workings of numbers previously used with other meanings. Ideally, libraries could begin using the new or revised numbers for new materials and could re­ classify old materials every time the classi­ fication system was updated. In practice, most libraries would find this impossible. Libraries can choose to begin using new or revised classification numbers for new materials, leaving old materials under the old classification, or they can continue to use the old numbers. Neither choice offers a completely satisfactory solution. While a library may attempt to maintain the integ­ rity of its own catalog, the fact that most libraries rely on shared copy for the bulk of their cataloging and cannot attempt to classify everything in-house further com­ plicates the situation. . Other legitimate variations in classifica­ tion can occur, even within one library, because of choices made in applying the classification schedules. For example, in­ terdisciplinary studies may fit into two or more places in the schedules, items that are parts of a series may be classed indi­ vidually or under a general number, and bibliographies may be classed together or with their individual subjects. Some li­ braries choose to make local modifications to the classification systems. Such deci­ sions usually prove expensive and dys­ functional for them and for other libraries in an automated network. If libraries ex­ pect classification to be used effectively as an additional point of subject access, then their local classification policies must be­ gin to reflect the increasing importance of precision, accuracy, currency, and stand­ ardization.-Elaine A. Franco, University of California, Davis. International Encyclopedia of Communi­ cations. Ed. by Erik Barnouw, et al. "When we wanted to improve our serials management, Faxon responded with Datalin:Y!. We needed journal availability information, quickly. They gave us online access to other libraries' check-in records. When Faxon responds, the whole subscriber community benefits. Faxon has helped us through competitive pricing policies and global access to publications. Now they're enhancing relations in the broader subscriber/publisher community by advancing common data communication standards and promoting shared resources. In this sense I see them as colleagues." -EllEN]. WAI7E, UNIVERSITY LIBRARIAN, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Helping you manage your world of information. To learn more about the Faxon Company, the international subscription agency with a commitment to quality service, calll (800) 766-0039. 566 College & Research Libraries New York: Oxford University Press and The Annenberg School of Communica­ tions, UniversityofPennsylvania, 1989. 4 vols. $350 (ISBN 0-19-504994-2 set) LC 88-18132. As represented by this new International Encyclopedia ofCommunications (IE C), Com­ munication(s) is an exercise par excellence in inter- or better, voracious disciplinarity. IEC bears witness to the amplification, even transformation, that many fields have undergone in recent years as schol­ arly territories have gone into flux, over­ lapping and melding, defining new sensi­ bilities, methodologies, and objects of study. Indeed, Communication(s) emer­ ges in these pages as the science of the glue that holds all the rest together, the common denominator of the print, visual, and performing arts and media, of sociol­ ogy, anthropology, philosophy, eco­ nomics, psychology, technology, politics, and history, of culture high and low and in between. As the compendium of interactions, of all those relationships, processes, acts of self-consciousness, tools, mediations, ob­ jects, and modes of behavior through which we become human, IEC reminds us that everything human is communication. It thus offers itself as an omnium-gatherum, a ground of possibility for all encyclope­ dias. It presents itself as the printed place where the heteroclite aggregation of things we call our world finds its table, the very table that Borges pulled out from un­ der Foucault as Borges read the story of the Chinese encyclopedia, for paging through IEC mimics precisely that exhila­ rating Borgesian retabulation of the un­ tabled, in the Fs, for example, as the reader moves from ''Face,'' ''Fact and Fic­ tion," and "Family" to "Feminist Theo­ ries of Communication,'' ''Food,'' and ''Forgery, Art'' and by way of ''Foucault'' himself to ''Functional Analysis.'' In IEC' s substance and structure, the editors make a strong case not only for the matu­ rity of Communication(s) as a scholarly enterprise but for its being the ultimate means for and object of what humanities and social science disciplines study. Although many of IEC' s articles speak directly to the history, technology, and November 1990 objects of librarianship, it is the context with which IEC frames them that will be most stimulating to librarians. For a pro­ fession with a vexed relationship to the world of scholarship, uneasy about its proper domain or theoretical basis, IEC suggests that it is not strictly to iriforma­ tion science that librarianship should look for its intellectual affiliations but, more broadly, to Communication(s). IEC's scope and especially its theoretical bent will be invigorating antidotes to the nar­ row pragmatism that dogs libraries and their work( ers) in that it encourages us to understand ourselves as part of an entire world-historical economy of symbolic ex­ change. In the way it positions and illumi­ nates the histories, processes, dynamics, and policy questions that environ and shape human experience, IEC suggests the substitution of ''communicator'' for ''librarian'' in ''academic librarian,'' a substitution that suggests, in turn, a dif­ ferent ground for our work. IEC is imaginatively conceived and well executed. Everything about it is likeable, from its list of contributors, generally good writing, attractive design and pro­ duction, and admirably current bibliogra­ phies to its well-developed metatextual apparatuses, which encourage readers to explore intellectual territories fragmented by the alphabet. Conspicuous among IEC' s virtues is the sense it gives of the dy­ namics that animate contemporary schol­ arship. These dynamics reveal themselves in the way many articles treat the influ­ ences of sex/gender, ethnicity, cultural predispositions, and social class on ideas and institutions, and in the inclusion of "Sexism," "Literary Canon," "Colonial­ ism," "Gender," etc., among the con­ tents . Concomitantly, IEC is generally sensitive to cultural frames of reference and to provincialisms of geography, eth­ nicity, and sex/gender. For example, the editors make good their promises about "international scope" not only in select­ ing contributors and topics but in identify­ ing people by national origin, including those from the U.S., and specifying "western" when a discussion treats the European rather than the "world" tradi­ tion. ACQUISITION PERSPECTIVES 5. Monographs in continuation and standing orders are given special atten­ tion. Your first volume required and all future volumes will be delivered as soon as they become available . Write or cnll for details about our reliable standi11g order service to libraries a11d discount incentive pla11. the BSOK D IJSEINC. Since 1962 JOBBERS SERVING LIBRARIES WITH ANY BOOK IN PRINT SINCE 1982 208 WEST CHICAGO STREET JONESVILLE . MICHIGAN <192!i0 0 I 25 Call or Write TODAY 1 • 800 • 248 • 1146 FAX: 517 • 849 • 9716 568 College & Research Libraries November 1990 While most readers are likely to agree that IEC's editors have made the right choices about its design, production, structure, and scope, any given reader will find disappointments in it, largely be­ cause that's the price one pays for being able to read in the first place. In this read­ er's case, and at the risk of quibbling in the face of a job so well done, I should note that, given the several audiences IEC ad­ dresses, I am uneasy about the variety of the contributors' approach and style. In addition to the inevitable stylistic differ­ ences among contributors, theoreti­ cal/thematic and chronological/factual treatments make for a vivid, unsettling contrast between "Museum," "Art," and "Avant-garde," say, and "Drama­ History." "University" and "Culture" are lifeless, while ''Margaret Mead,'' "Sigmund Freud," and "Ethnographic Film'' do not mention recent controversy. Then, too, granting that the editors had to make difficult decisions about the list of entries and that the reader can create "missing" articles using the indexes, I wanted articles that weren't there, for ex­ ample, thought, stereotype, theory, eth­ nicity, convention/meeting, prejudice, in­ tellectuals, learned society, fan, and (academic) discipline. It goes without saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Indeed, the cynical might see IEC as simply an­ other site where the lust for summary ex­ pertise conspires with the age of packag­ ing. It successfully defends itself on these counts, however, with the novelty of the undertaking as package and the richly suggestive variety of its contents. Yes, it is a package, but then experience has to come in packages in order to be intelligi­ ble; the IEC summarizes, but then it also encourages the reader to read critically and to look beyond. As I see it, opening a package of encyclopedic brevity to find this kind of encouragement is something we librarians might reasonably cherish as knowledge tries to retabulate itself in the untabled litter of the information age.­ Robert Kieft, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania. Integrating Library Use Skills into the General Education Cu"icu1um. Ed. by Maureen Pastine and Bill Katz. New York, London: The Haworth Press, 1989. 334p. $44.95 (ISBN 0-86656-841­ 7). LC 89-31193. A number of reports and books pub­ lished during the 1980s severely criticized the American educational system because it did not prepare students for either active or lifelong learning. In their discussion of educational reform these critiques largely ignored the role of the library and of librar­ ians. Maureen Pastine and Bill Katz have compiled twenty-four essays that attempt to explore the ways in which programs of library instruction can be integrated into the curriculum to promote active, critical, and lifelong learning. Although the role of the librarian in the process of developing critical reasoning skills is the principal theme of this vol­ ume, only a few of the articles really focus on the kinds of research projects that would ideally replace the rote assign­ ments typical of introductory classes that rely on textbook and reserve room read­ ings. Among these are the articles by Pa­ tricia Senn Breivik, Paula Elliott, Alice Spitzer, and Susan Griswold Blandy. The last three describe librarians' involvement in the creation of general education core curriculum courses. Elliot and Spitzer at Washington State University and Blandy at the Hudson Valley Community College succeeded in integrating (one is tempted to write "infiltrating" in this context) what they considered to be more challeng­ ing library assignments into the core cur­ riculum courses under development at their institutions. As they describe their experiences, the librarians express the view that instructors are generally ineffec­ tive and that librarians are better qualified to devise fruitful research assignments. Blandy writes: "Faculty may need advice on alternatives to research papers, and more important, they need advice on top­ ics to assign and how to grade the results" and, further, II the librarian bears the re­ sponsibility for general education at the [community] college, having access to all