College and Research Libraries


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 



the information and resources necessary 
to enliven the class, extend horizons, and 
facilitate independent learning." Simi­
larly, Spitzer and Elliot take credit for giv­
ing instructors "tips" on how to develop 
meaningful and open-ended assign­
ments. These librarians may well have de­
vised the kinds of assignments that bring 
the students into the library and engage 
their critical faculties, but their smug and 
self-aggrandizing tone does not serve 
them well. 

The notion that the librarian should re­
place the instructor is unintentionally sub­
verted in the very first essay by Patricia 
Senn Breivik. At the same time that she 
urges librarians to teach the research skills 
that will prepare students for ''lifelong 
learning, active citizenship and risk­
taking," she chides her colleagues, who 
presumably have these skills, for being 
passive, timid, and inward looking! Paula 
Elliot inadvertently emphasizes the price 
that some librarians pay for acceptance by 
the faculty. While serving on a curriculum 
committee, the two librarians, Spitzer and 
Elliot, ''created a timetable, drew up a list 
of supplies and a checklist of prepara­
tions, arranged for refreshments, set up 
meeting rooms, reserved films, hung 
maps, posted posters of exotic places, pro­
vided the taping of lectures, and hosted a 
reception." Why would they not be in­
vited to serve on every faculty committee 
in the world? The reality that bibliographic 
instruction librarians are often unwilling 
to face is underscored by Betsy Baker who 
notes that most library instruction in aca­
demic settings is confined to one-hour ses­
sions, that students often have other, le­
gitimate priorities than the submission of 
a well-researched paper, and that faculty 
often do research that bypasses the li­
brary. William Miller reminds us suc­
cinctly that librarians cannot be ''the tail 
that wags the dog.'' 

Many of the other topics in library in­
struction treated in this volume have al­
ready been discussed elsewhere: teaching 
methodology and the structure of class 
presentations; public relations, especially 
in connection with administrators; chang-

Recent Publications 569 

. ing demographics with more foreign and 
older students, especially at the graduate 
level; the necessity to establish connec­
tions with various levels of education and 
various types of institutions; and new def­
initions of what constitutes the ''campus'' 
as classes are beamed to remote stations. 
Although often written in undigestible 
prose (on page 205 the followjng phrase 
appears: "the availability of available 
'user-friendly' IR system"), these essays 
do provide a panorama of what is being 
done in library instruction (mainly in the 
mid- and northwest, since that is where 
most of the contributors work). 

On the whole it seems that librarians are 
still employing the same variety of instruc­
tional methods to reach their constituen­
cies: library tours, workbooks, audio tape 
tours, and course-integrated or stand­
alone class presentations. But coexisting 
with these traditional methods are com­
puters of various levels of sophistication. 
These computers are being programmed 
to take over the function of bibliographic 
instruction. Although still expensive and 
unwieldy, computer-assisted instruction 
is on the march and, while CAl may solve 
some problems (personnel, for instance), 
it will surely create new ones. Instruction 
at the reference desk will soon change as 
well. In their essay, Judith M. Pask and 
Dana E. Smith describe a Purdue­
developed computer program that will an­
swer most of the types of questions asked 
at the reference desk; according to the de- . 
velopers, these programs can be easily 
adapted to local needs. As reference tools 
also become digitized, librarians will have 
to decide whether these new tools will be 
housed in the computing centers or in the 
library, and determine who will be re­
sponsible for teaching patrons how to use 
them. Modes of access are also changing. 
Rao Aluri notes that indexes will disap­
pear and students will be able to access 
documents (both books and journal arti­
cles) directly from citations in computer­
ized catalogs. Bibliographic instruction 
methods will have to reflect these 
changes. To this reader at least, the essays 
in this volume reinforce the belief that we 



570 College & Research Libraries 

can teach students about the library as it 
exists now, and we can communicate the 
notion that libraries are organized system­
atically and that these systems can be 
learned, but we cannot pretend that the 
skills we teach will be valid for life.-Eva 
Sartori, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. 

Bristol, Michael D. Shakespeare's America, 
America's Shakespeare. London, New 
York: Routledge, 1990. ix, 237p. $40 
(ISBN 0-415-01538-3). LC 89-6057. 

Gibson, James M. The Philadelphia Shake­
speare Story: Horace Howard Furness and 
the Variorum Shakespeare. New York: 
AMS Press, 1990. viii, 308p. alk. paper, 
$42.50 (ISBN 0-404-62293-3) LC 87­
45801 (AMS Studies in the Renaissance; 
23) 
Shakespeare is one of the most success­

ful products ever imported into America; 
so successful, in fact, that the interna­
tional Shakespeare industry (comprised 
of scholarship, production, and tourism) 
is now largely supported by Americans, 
with the Japanese beginning to run a 
strong second. The history of America's 
adoption of Shakespeare is examined in 
two new books that complement each 
other in their coverage and style. Michael 
Bristol's Shakespeare's America explores the 
philosophical and cultural background 
that gave rise to Shakespearemania in the 
nineteenth century and that has sup­
ported its various manifestations down to 
the present day. James Gibson's The Phila­
delphia Shakespeare Story focuses on the life 
and work of one man who almost single­
handedly shifted the responsibility of 
Shakespeare scholarship from the Old 
World to the New. 

A professor of English at McGill Univer­
sity, Bristol approaches his subject with a 
degree of critical jargon that some outside 
the academy may find offputting. It is 
worth bearing with him, however, be­
cause his Marxist slant gives rise to a 
healthy degree of scepticism. His probing 
questions about the reasons for America's 
bardolatry impinge on the current argu­
ment about the canon, which has recently 
made its way out of the ivory tower and 
onto the pages of the popular press. Bris­
tol points out that the term "Shake-

November 1990 

speare'' is used in at least three different 
ways: to refer to the historic person, to 
"the man and his works," and "to some 
kind of socio-cultural or spiritual origin, 
source, or presence." The last of these he 
links with the nostalgic bent of much 
scholarship in the humanities. America's 
adoption of Shakespeare in the nine­
teenth century provided ''an otherwise 
lacking depth of cultural tradition'' for the 
new nation, "in relation to the European 
longue dunk" 

It was Emerson who most clearly voiced 
the American attraction to Shakespeare's 
''originality,'' ''expressive autonomy,'' 
and "moral sentiment, a natural impulse 
towards higher forms of emulation or of 
self-interest,'' which seemed to coincide 
with the promise offered by life in the 
New World. Bristol goes on to show how 
Emerson's ideas were adopted and 
adapted by prominent American Shake­
spearian scholars, including George Ly­
man Kittredge, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, 
and Hardin Craig, down to the present. 

Emerson also had a profound influence 
on both Horace Howard Furness and 
Henry Clay Folger, and it is Bristol's chap­
ter on "The Function of the Archive" that 
will most interest librarians. He begins by 
discussing the paradox of libraries: the 
conservative principles of their construc­
tion ''as the expression of large monopo­
listic accumulations of wealth and 
power," which contrarily make possible 
"the creation of radical, action-orienting 
research programs." He touches on the 
funding of public libraries by the Carnegie 
Foundation during the later nineteenth 
century and explores in more detail the 
concurrent development of great private 
libraries, such as those of Furness and 
Folger. 

Bristol shows how Furness's library and 
editorial project were tied to the social re­
lationships among American and British 
intelligentsia at the time, and to the found­
ing of the English Department at the Uni­
versity of Pennsylvania. This institution­
alizing of literary study would provide the 
death knell to the gentleman scholar. Bris­
tol then explores the relationship between 
Folger's private collecting project and the 
public politics of his library's Washington