reviews 400 College & Research Libraries evaluating and weeding reference collec­ tions. —J. Christina Smith, Boston Univer­ sity. Watson-Boone, Rebecca. How Library and Information Science Research Literature Describes Librarians: A Synthesis of Se­ lected 1985–1995 Articles. Mequon, Wisc.: Center for the Study of Infor­ mation Professionals, Inc. (CSIP Occa­ sional Papers, no. 1), 1998. 33p. $8.98, paper (ISSN 1520-8400). The image of practicing librarians, from all types of libraries in the United States, has frequently been the focus of research in the library and information science (LIS) literature. Who were the authors of these research papers? What topics have been studied? What will be possible fu­ ture research agendas? Readers should expect to have these questions answered by this occasional paper published by the Center for the Study of Information Pro­ fessionals, Inc. (CSIP). The mission of the center is to enlarge the body of knowledge that describes and defines those individuals whose work is focused on generating, selecting, organiz­ ing, preserving, evaluating, disseminat­ ing, and using information in service to others. In this publication, the first of the CSIP Occasional Papers, Watson-Boone presents interesting insights on how the LIS literature describes librarians. It syn­ thesizes some of the research on this topic, as published in fourteen LIS research jour- Index to advertisers Amer. Chemical Society cover 3 Biosis 307 Blackwell’s Book Services 304 Bowker 363 Capstone Publishing 371 CHOICE 396 EBSCO cover 4 Gale Group 350-351 Greenwood Publishing 299 Harvey Miller Publishers 349 Library Technologies 300 OCLC cover 2 Theatre Research Data Group 384 July 1999 nals between 1985 and 1995. This paper is a rather small publication—only thirty- three pages, including a fourteen-page bibliography. To qualify for inclusion in this study, journal articles had to: (1) be full length or in a column devoted to research, (2) focus on librarians as the major partici­ pants with regard to the study topic, and (3) contain findings of a research study. Of the 4,476 articles in the fourteen jour­ nals, systematic review of each article identified 343 (7.66%) as appropriate for inclusion in this study. However, this pa­ per drew on a sample of only 165 (48.1%) of the 343 qualified studies. Among the selected journals, College & Research Li­ braries had the largest number of quali­ fied studies. Watson-Boone concentrates on the types of research methods used, author­ ship, and topics studied. She discovered that the authors of the studies/articles used mail surveys with questionnaires more than any other research method. Practitioners were authors of 41 percent of the studies, LIS faculty of 41 percent, other researchers of 9 percent, and prac­ titioners and LIS faculty were coauthors of 9 percent. Librarian studies by practi­ tioners appear most frequently in ALA divisional journals and in Special Librar­ ies, the official publication of the Special Libraries Association, while LIS faculty articles were more likely to appear in their own professional association journal, the Journal of Education for Library and Infor­ mation Science. Topics studied clustered into four broad categories: demographics, employ- ment–positions–jobs, attitudes and be­ haviors, and institutions. “Demograph­ ics” treats librarians as a population in terms of age, family background, and educational attainment. The current av­ erage age of librarians would appear to be 41. The majority of female librarians do marry and most raise children. Aca­ demic librarians and school media spe­ cialists are most apt to have second gradu­ ate degrees. Increasingly, academic librar­ ians who become directors of major re­ Book Reviews 401 search libraries have earned the Ph.D. Under “employment–positions–jobs,” the studies revealed that catalogers have been studied more than other LIS speci­ alities. Various changes (e.g., new catalog­ ing rules and the implementation of online catalogs) are obvious reasons why catalogers have received so much atten­ tion. Generally, these studies found that positive changes in the profession include heightened job interest, better use of in­ dividual abilities, increased understand­ ing between technical and public service areas, and the development of a greater flexibility among librarians when coping with emergencies. Negative trends in­ clude fragmentation of time, lack of con­ sistency in cataloging, problems with training, and difficulties in developing expertise in multiple areas. Under “attitudes and behaviors,” li­ brarians are described as having very positive attitudes toward the technology they use in searching. Special librarians appear most interested in studying their image. The results of some studies found special librarians to be risk-taking, intro­ spective, and judgment oriented. Aca­ demic librarians focus mostly on faculty status issues whereas public librarians concentrate on personalities, programs, and the professional skills of children’s librarians. Unquestionably, librarians are concerned about the lack of effective com­ munication between librarians and tech­ nologists. The author is to be commended for the historical sketch of the changing role of the librarian from late 1800s to the current time. Under “institutions,” the author in­ cluded viewpoints (extracted from the studies) about the different types of librar­ ians (principally, academic, school, spe­ cial, and public). There are essentially no data on how librarians in one type of library perceive their counterparts in other types of librar­ ies. This is an area that warrants addi­ tional research. Three areas were not touched on at all in the journal studies, yet they illustrate interesting research questions. They are: (1) What are the in­ formation-seeking habits of librarians? (2) How frequently do librarians use librar­ ies for nonjob needs? and (3) How differ­ ent or similar are librarian library users from other library users? This work contains 165 carefully se­ lected resources on the description of li­ brarians. If one is interested in conduct­ ing research on librarians, the bibliogra­ phy would be an excellent starting point. Notwithstanding the fact that this pub­ lication includes findings on librarians from all types of libraries, there are sev­ eral good reasons why academic librarians should consult this well-organized, easy- to-read work. Not least among them is that academic librarians will learn basic con­ cepts that will enable them to better un­ derstand themselves. Moreover, this occa­ sional paper is essential reading for any­ one planning to conduct research on the image and roles of librarians. —Sha Li Zhang, Wichita State University. Willinsky, John. Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire’s End. Min­ neapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Pr., 1998. 304p. $22.95, alk. paper, cloth (ISBN 0­ 8166-3076-3); paper (0-8166-3077-1). LC 97-43232. As South Africa moved from apartheid to liberation, it was fashionable to say that the past should be forgotten and a line drawn across the nation’s history. Now that the inevitable and predictable conti­ nuities have reasserted themselves, such comments are rarely heard. They are made to look all the more unrealistic in the light of writing, such as Willinsky’s, that traces the extent to which the impe­ rial way of knowing the world has sur­ vived within educational systems follow­ ing the demise of empire. Imperialists subscribed to the doc­ trine, familiar to librarians, that knowl­ edge represents power. Indeed, their de­ sire to know, coupled with economic and political interests (labeled tellingly by the author as “intellectual mercantilism”), caused them to behave in ways charac­ teristic of librarianship—cataloguing, classifying, ordering, and creating what