College and Research Libraries


tion-thick worlds because of our marvel-
ous and everyday capacities to select, 
edit, single out, structure, highlight, group, 
pair, merge, harmonize, synthesize, focus, 
organize, condense, reduce, boil down, 
choose, categorize, catalog, classify, refine, 
abstract, scan, look into .... Clutter and 
confusion are failures of design, not attri-
butes of information." Tufte's books are 
profound meditations on ways in which 
information can be envisioned, "in order 
to reason about, communicate, document, 
and preserve that knowledge." They are 
exhibits of, and reflections on, works of 
"cognitive art," beautiful works of useful 
information, works at the intersection of 
image, word, number, and art. 

Anyone involved in the design of in-
formation displays, from library hand-
outs to computer interfaces, should take 
time to study these books. But I would 
also put these books on the reading lists 
for library school courses in reference 
and bibliography (especially the evalua-
tion of reference works), collection de-
velopment, communication, cataloging, 
information retrieval theory, and infor-
mation systems design, and would rec-
ommend them to anyone seriously 
interested in any of those subjects, not just 
to clarify their ideas about what makes for 
good or bad visual displays of informa-
tion, but as instruments for thought about 
thought, communication, and information. 

These are source books, vivid demon-
strations of graphic power, that have the 
potential to change an individual's view 
of information: away from the view that 
discourse is primary and graphics are 
simply illustration, toward the view that 
discourse is often problematic and that 
methods for the graphic display of infor-
mation are for mariy purposes superior 
in the portrayal of density, complexity, 
and dimensionality. Tufte offers us deep 
considerations on the limits of discourse, 
with implications for how we think 
about communication and the storage 
and retrieval of information. 

Envisioning Information is, not at all in-
cidentally, irresistibly beautiful. It is 
cheap at its price. Both books must be in 
any decent academic library; many li-
brarians and information scientists will 

Book Reviews 383 

insist on having their own copies as 
welL-Patrick Wilson, University of Cali-
fornia-Berkeley. 

Advances in Library Resource Sharing. 
Cargill, Jennifer, and Diane J. Graves, 
eds. V.l, Westport, Conn.: Meckler, 1990. 
238p. alk. paper, $55 per year (ISSN 
1052-262X; ISBN 0-88736-490-X). 

In one of the best essays in this book, 
Marsha Ra makes a credible case that 
"resource sharing as we now understand 
it will probably cease to exist." We almost 
certainly are looking at a paradigm shift in 
libraries. Whether "advances" -the opti-
mistic word used in the title of this col-
lection of essays-is the right word for 
this shift is profoundly uncertain. 

This is not a good book. It is cluttered 
with too many essays that were written 
without evident purpose. We do not 
need yet another account of the Center 
for Research Libraries, or an article on 
the economics of resource sharing that 
contains no economic analysis, or a set of 
unthoughtful reports on regional 
resource sharing, or a complaint about 
library services from a faculty person 
who is myopic, uninformed, and cranky. 
There is not much in this book to suggest 
that its compilers had a definable edito-
rial purpose (other than to produce a 
book) or took much care to create a vol-
ume of value and merit. The compilers 
promise an annual volume on resource 
sharing. Let us hope for other things. 

Amid this dross, there are some essays 
that merit attention. Richard M. Dough-
erty and Carol Hughes issue the now 
familiar call for libraries to shift their 
mission from owning information to 
providing access to it, to shift from deliv-
ering bibliographic units to delivering 
information, and to do this in ways that 
are speedy, convenient, and customized 
to the individual reader's needs. Marsha 
Ra picks up this theme and observes that 
electronic networks, uniform communi-

. cation standards, expert systems, and 
workstations will soon permit resource 
sharing with little direct involvement of 
librarians. Some of the transformations 
in authorship and publishing that elec-
tronic media will require, if we are to 



384 College & Research Libraries 

avoid information chaos, are thought-
fully described by Bonnie Juergens and 
Gloriana St. Clair. 

And in one of the book's most useful 
chapters, Adrian W. and JulieS. Alexan-
der summarize the transformation of in-
tellectual property rights that may 
accompany the electronic dissemination of 
information. As the Alexanders make clear, 
the traditional business of libraries has 
been the distribution-at both circulation 
desks and interlibrary loan departments-
of copies of printed works. Digital and 
other dynamic media (such as recording 
tape) bring radical change to our notions 
of "distribution" and "copy." These 
changes have prompted many to observe 
that libraries are now in competition with 
other information providers and may not 
survive, except as museums for materials 
that predate the electronic age of informa-
tion distribution. 

Two observations might be offered on 
this vision of the future. The first is that 
someone will have to ensure continued 
access to printed information, and no 
one can do that better than librarians. 
Perhaps librarians should avoid pejora-
tive descriptions of this vital and endur-
ing function of libraries. We have other 
functions as well, one of the most funda-
mental of which is captured in the 
phrase "resource sharing." Ever since li-
braries began to function in the public 
interest about 250 years ago, their eco-
nomic and social function has been to 
enable users to share among themselves, 
rather than to own individually, the books, 
journals, and other materials they need. 
The question before the library profession 
now is not whether we embrace digital 
media (we have!), but whether we will 
continue to deliver the economic and 
social benefits of shared usage to our 
readers. Powerful technological and mar-
ketplace forces are arrayed against such 
service. 

Libraries will not "advance" by com-
peting with the for-profit sector on its 
own terms. Libraries, working in a trans-
formed environment, must instead find 
ways to preserve a different communal 
set of terms for information use that pro-
tects the individual economic benefits 

July 1991 

and the more general public interest that 
have so long been embedded in both 
copyright law and the profession of li-
brarianship._.:._Scott Bennett, Johns Hop-
kins University, Baltimore, Maryland. 

Pool, Ithiel de Sola. Technologies without 
Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a 
Global Age. Eli M. N oam, ed. Cambridge, 
Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1990. 283p. 
alk. paper, $27.50 (ISBN 0-674-87263-0). 

Ithiel de Sola Pool had a long and 
illustrious career as a political scientist 
and pioneer in the field of communica-
tions research. For thirty years, he was 
on the faculty of M.I.T., where he 
founded and headed both the political 
science department and the interdisci-
plinary Research Program on Communi-
cations Policy. H.e was a prolific writer, 
and his books consistently won acclaim. 
Even in the last two years of his life, he 
published some twenty articles and two 
books. One of these, Technologies of Free-
dom (1983), dealt with the social and po-
litical status of the media in the United 
States. A second volume was to deal with 
the same issue in the international realm. 
This manuscript, edited by Eli M . Noam 
of Columbia University, became Technol-
ogies without Boundaries. 

The extraordinary mental vigor and 
optimism that enabled Pool to continue 
working at an intense. pace after the onset 
of his illness are evident in this book, 
which Noam describes as "a specialist's 
book for generalists, and a generalist's 
book for specialists." Clearly written 
and passionately argued, Technologies 
without Boundaries is the final expression 
of Pool's missionary conviction that the 
new telecommunications and comput-
ing technology will have untold social, 
material, and political benefits, if only 
they remain free of government regula-
tion. To this battle against government 
encroachment, Pool brought an impres-
sive understanding of technology as 
well as a humanistic perspective and a 
close familiarity with social science re-
search in the field of communications. 

Technologies without Boundaries con-
tains a very good introduction to the 
technologies of telecommunications and