College and Research Libraries


Book Reviews 
Dewey, Barbara 1., ed. Raising Money for 

Academic and Research Libraries: A How-
to-Do-It Manual for Librarians. New York: 
Neal-Schuman,1991. $37.50. (ISBN 1-
55570-082-9). 
A few months ago, the Wall Street Jour-

nal reported that libraries have begun to 
look to private sources of funding to 
supplement their budgets. In a time of 
fiscal constraint, spiraling costs of print 
material and increased appetite for ex-
pensive technological products and 
services, libraries are developing in-
novative ways of increasing their 
budgets. The newspaper cited a particu-
larly striking fund-raising activity called 
calf bingo used by the Sydney, Montana, 
public library, in which the winner is 
determined by a calf" deposit" on a giant 
board. 

Academic libraries, also, are becoming 
involved in fund raising not only to ac-
quire "luxury" items such as important 
manuscripts or valuable collections, but 
also increasingly to provide the basic ne-
cessities expected by their users. Raising 
Money for Academic and Research Libraries 
is the first work devoted entirely to fund 
raising for academic libraries. Although 
it does not get down to the level of detail 
provided by the Wall Street Journal, it 
provides a very good overview of the 
institutional framework and the basic 
strategies that allow library fund raisers, 
or development officers, as they are 
frequently called, to stage the kind of 
idiosyncratic event described above. 

This volume consists of nine chapters, 
each written by a professional involved 
in library development in an academic 
library. The authors are all members of 
Development Officers of Research Aca-
demic Libraries, North America, or 
DORAL; N.A., an organization created 

270 

in 1987. Collectively, they map out the 
field of library fund raising by describ-
ing techniques for working with individu-
als, corporations, foundations, and 
government agencies. Thus there are 
chapters titled "Fundraising/Develop-
ment Plan," "Library Friends," "Donor 
and Donor Relations," "Grants," ''The 
Corporate Connection," ''The Library 
Campaign," ''Planned Giving," "Public 
Relations," and ''Development Personnel." 
The authors write simply and, in most 
cases, avoid jargon and euphemisms. The 
"how-to" orientation of the volume is re-
flected in the visual presentation, which 
includes wide margins, clear headings, 
and bullet statements. 

Although most of the contributors 
have backgrounds in fund raising rather 
than in librarianship, they are well 
aware of the position of the library 
within the educational institution and 
suggest ways of building constituencies 
and of working with university admin-
istrators and foundations. The focus is 
always on the practical, and there is littie 
in the way of historical perspective or 
sociological analysis. Each chapter func-
tions as a useful checklist of points to be 
covered and activities to be undertaken 
when embarking on a specific fund-rais-
ing project. For example, there is practi-
cal advice on publications, outlines of 
fund-raising campaigns, sketches of or-
ganizational charts, and pointers on ap-
proaching government agencies. Lists of 
professional organizations that can help 
the fledgling development officer are in-
cluded. 

All the chapters are useful, although 
the chapter on corporate giving is some-
what vague, and the one on planned 
giving is too dense for the beginner. Joan 
Hood's discussion of library friends 



groups is among the best. She stresses 
the critical importance of friends groups, 
which she terms the "core of the 
development program" and "the critical 
factor in the longer term investment of 
bequests, significant donations of gifts-
in-kind, capital programs, and the build-
ing of endowment funds." Hood 
highlights the key elements in develop-
ing a vital friends group (e.g., programs, 
newsletters) and describes the various 
ways in which volunteers can become 
involved in library operations as well as 
in fund raising drives. In their chapter on 
grants, Helen W. Samuels and Samuel A. 
Streit describe government agencies 
with an interest in libraries and note 
where interests overlap. The reader, 
however, will have to go to other sources 
to develop · a clearer understanding of 
how to approach foundations. 

In her chapter "Donor and Donor Re-
lations," Charlene Clark describes the 
typical donor as a conservative or re-
ligious person who views his or her con-
tribution as an investment in the 
institution's future. Surely this is too nar-
row a characterization of donors. Vartan 
Gregorian, now president of Brown Uni-
versity, who provided the brief introduc-
tion to Raising Money, proved himself a 
master of fund raising on behalf of the 
New York Public Library when he was 
head of that institution. It would have 
been fascinating to have his views on 
why people give and under what cir-
cumstances.-Eva M. Sartori, University 
of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska. 

Allen, James Smith. In the Public Eye: A 
History of Reading in Modern France, 
1800-1940. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 
Univ. Pr., 1991. 325p. $39.50 (ISBN 0-
691-03162-2). LC 90-28810. 
James Allen's book on reading in mod-

ern France is an adventurous explora-
tion of relatively new territory. The 
author has assembled and synthesized 
an enormous and diverse body of 
sources to address a topic fundamental 
to the social history of ideas. Influenced 
by recent studies of reading in early 
modern Europe, he poses three basic 
questions: In what circumstances did 

Book Reviews 271 

people read in France from 1800 to 1940? 
How did they read? What did their read-
ing mean to them and why? These ques-
tions correspond roughly to the three 
divisions of the book and are framed in 
the context of contemporary theories on 
reception and reader-response. There is 
no single thesis to prove, nor are there 
striking discoveries; instead Allen draws 
a lively range of observations from the 
mass of sources he surveys. 

The primary focus is on readers' per-
sonal perspectives. A variety of contextual 
factors influenced these perspectives, 
many of them indicated by data that are 
relatively clear, such as literacy rates, 
publishing statistics, educational trends 
(especially in the study of literary texts), 
and censorship. These areas are deftly 
described in a tour de force of survey and 
synthesis. Just as important to the study 
are the socially defined predispositions 
that led readers to derive certain mean-
ings from reading. Different interpretive 
communities are shown to determine 
reader response, based on such factors as 
regional perspectives, class identification, 
or gender-consciousness. Whatever the 
context, reading gradually developed into 
a private act of self-discovery, subject to 
the personal and even creative involve-
ment of the reader. In general, the reac-
tion to literary texts reflected a delayed 
grasp of literary trends, meaning that 
readers' responses evoked the themes of 
classicism, romanticism, realism, or 
symbolism long after those movements 
became prominent features of literary 
representation. The book often seems to 
be as concerned with attitudes toward 
authors and reading as it is with the act of 
reading itself, highlighting the public or 
socially correct image of literary engage-
ment. This is a perfectly valid approach 
in French cultural studies, where the 
tradition and sometimes the mythology 
of an actively literate society continue to 
play such important roles. Image, jux-
taposed with reality, comes into sharper 
focus as the author defines the historical 
context. 

The focus of the study, the methodology, 
and the choice of sources are narrower 
than the title indicates. The variety of