reviews 278 College & Research Libraries tive; each chapter also has its own list of references. Two big omissions are the con­ tributors’ credentials and an index. A few errors remain in the text. One is in the Introduction, where the passage date for the ADA is given as 1991; the ADA was signed into law July 26, 1990. In his chapter on accessible text formats, Steve Noble states that library patrons have the option of ordering “large-print texts through the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS).” This mistake is repeated six pages later. The Library of Congress, through NLS, does not distribute large-print ma­ terial. More should have been done concern­ ing furniture, library-produced material (flyers, brochures), and descriptive vid­ eos. And Susan Beck’s reliance on Phonic Ear products to the exclusion of other brands for certain types of listening aids leaves the uninformed reader underinformed. Moreover, it is surpris­ ing that there is no chapter on learning disabilities, especially because McNulty indicates how this population has grown in recent years, in colleges and universi­ ties. There is a great deal to know about the ADA. It impinges on all areas of academia, not just the library. Concern about the law, and full compliance with it, needs to be part of our organizational culture. Access is not a static entity. It changes as quickly as new technology. Books such as this one assist in the deci­ sion making about what we must do to create a disability-friendly academic li­ brary. It is in everyone’s best interest to do so—because it is the law, because it is right, and because “the disabled” is the only minority group anyone may join.— Joann Block, Broward County Library, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Krummel, D.W. Fiat Lux, Fiat Latebra: A Celebration of Historical Library Func­ tions. Urbana, Ill.: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Univ. of Illinois (Occasional Papers No. 209), 1999. 27p. $8 (ISSN 0276 1769). May 2000 The chief virtue of this engaging and in­ formative overview of library history is brevity; if the old adage is right, this es­ say contains much wit and perhaps some useful wisdom. The overtaxed reviewer is suitably grateful for this contribution from a distinguished music bibliographer and long-time library educator at the University of Illinois. Here is a broad and sweeping vista, seen from the accommo­ dating position of an elevated view after a moderate climb. Even those who avoid the study of history will welcome it and perhaps even point to it as a reminder that not all historical works can be dismissed as too long, too ponderous, or too pomp­ ous and pedantic, for it is none of these. And though properly documented, it is not surrounded by academic barbed wire as much—perhaps too much—academic writing is. Perhaps it is best described as a contribution in the tradition of the fa­ miliar essay, which tries to approach and contextualize a broad, significant topic in accessible language. If in doing so, it sac­ rifices analytical precision and empirical detail, it does so for a commendable, and perhaps more worthwhile, purpose. Although much library history consists of journeyman spadework that only an aficionado could really love, D.W. Krummel has come on the scene to look over the entire valley, indicate the gen­ eral pattern of succession among the spe­ cies, pause occasionally to describe curi­ osities, and encourage the visitor to ex­ plore on her or his own. The central theme is reflected in the complementary oppo­ sition, suggested in the title and elabo­ rated in the text, between light and the inevitable blind spots that light automati­ cally creates; when one place is illumi­ nated, countless others are hidden. The motto might be, Whatever reveals also conceals. This may sound flip and delib­ erately paradoxical, but it is really obvi­ ous, as the old joke about the drunk look­ ing for his keys under the lamppost sug­ gests. Asked why he isn’t checking any­ where else, he says, “Well, I can only look where the light is.” Thus, the writer is suggesting, our familiar library technolo­ Book Reviews 279 gies are to be understood on an analogy with the lamppost. The classification schemes we rely on or dispense with, the catalogs and database systems we use for storage of records, the shelf space and the servers where we house materials, and the vocabularies we use to retrieve them—all of these not only help bring the field into sharp focus, but they also pro­ vide innumerable places where items get lost. Using this as a point of departure, the remainder of the essay sketches a broad outline of library history that divides the field into seven great ages. Krummel ob­ serves that there is nothing special about the number seven, so perhaps his seven- league-booted stride from 3000 B.C. to the present age is simple coincidence. If so, it is useful for it enables us to fly high, some­ thing not enough of us do very often. When we do, we see extinct volcanoes, the floors of ancient oceans, riverbeds dry for centuries, and immense fields of petrified wood where green forests once flourished. And all this has brought us here. In the earliest periods of recorded his­ tory, libraries and librarians in the agri­ cultural empires of the Fertile Crescent tended working archives housing the evi­ dence of the shared understandings of government. In the Greco-Roman period, the first academic institutions arose, and their libraries served to support them (not included in this necessarily truncated ac­ count, in the twilight of Roman domina­ tion, Greek-speaking grammarians devel­ oped the first systems of textual annota­ tion). By the early medieval period, Chris­ tian Europe had supplanted and yet pre­ served these both with libraries devoted to the glory of God. Renaissance human­ ism radically challenged this emphasis on the divine and produced materials and collections devoted to celebrating human virtue and courage. Writers such as Francis Bacon—in the Age of Science, which began in the later medieval period under the Franciscan and other orders— substituted for this the idea that knowl­ edge must benefit people, that learning must advance and improve the human estate. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the spread of literacy had created a larger and more diverse reading pub­ lic, and by the middle of the following century, that public was a mass audience, reading for many different and some­ times incompatible reasons. And a cen­ tury after this, which brings us very close to the present, the Baconian ideal was transformed by very rapid technological development, which produced the array of record and material formats and me­ dia we all use today. Krummel concludes with some recom­ mendations for further reading. Unfortu­ nately absent from this list is the book he once hoped to make from this essay, origi­ nally given as a lecture back in 1983. Spe­ cialists will poke holes—they always do—in the large, overarching framework, but most other readers will, I think, very much enjoy the informal and global treat­ ment. As the author himself admits, much is missing, especially the essential story of libraries in the Islamic world. In the end, Fiat Lux, Fiat Latebra creates a blind spot of its own, for there is another fruit­ ful opposition that remains latent, the contrast between lux and tenebra. The search for knowledge actually creates ig­ norance: the more we know, the more we do not know. What role do libraries and librarians play in the creation of igno­ rance? Obviously, this is a subject for an­ other essay.—Michael F. Winter, University of California, Davis. Librarians as Learners, Librarians as Teach­ ers: The Diffusion of Internet Expertise in the Academic Library. Ed. Patricia O’Brien Libutti. Chicago: ALA, 1999. 296p. $27 (ISBN 0-8389-8003-1). LC 99­ 13042. As early as 1994, members of ACRL’s New York chapter planned a book docu­ menting their experiences learning and teaching the Internet. The resulting col­ lection of more than twenty articles by librarians, MLS students and faculty, and administrators should strike a chord with anyone who lived through the techno­ logical changes of the past five years.