Reviews.indd 190 College & Research Libraries March 2008 and university libraries would become tied together through statewide consor- tia, resource-sharing agreements, and online catalogs that facilitate patron-initi- ated borrowing (or the degree to which community colleges would become an integral part of this equation through con- sortia, distance learning, and articulation programs), his basic question remains sound: what are the unique opportuni- ties presented to librarians in the college setting, and how can the identifi cation of excellence in that arena complement the discussion of excellence in library service as defined more typically by the experi- ence of the university library? Earlham staked its claim under Farber’s leader- ship to the idea that excellence in college librarianship could be defined by the contribution to the educational mission of the campus, and the continued resonance of that claim can be seen in the mission statements of libraries at institutions such as Wartburg College (“Educating Infor- mation-Literate Lifelong Learners”). And, while some 21st-century instruc- tion librarians may find Farber’s focus on teaching students about “the eff ective use of …library materials” and on the importance of a well-designed search strategy to be somewhat limited in today’s environment, one must also recognize the prescience of Farber’s comments on the importance of continuing professional education for teaching librarians (1977) and on the role that critical thinking instruction would play as part of instruc- tional services in libraries and as part of the broader enterprise of undergraduate education in an information age (1984). Reading Farber’s work from 1974, 1984, or 1991 allows the reader to appreciate the man for his progressive ideas but also to question those ideas that appear dated. Among the latter, one might focus on the views presented in this collection on the professional responsibilities of the subject specialist or on Farber’s views on the responsibility of classroom faculty for information literacy instruction. In 1977, Farber spoke about the subject specialist as bibliographer and concluded that: “Their training, their interests are in dis- ciplinary areas, in research materials and procedures, and not in the educational process.” Of the 21st-century subject specialist, certainly, this cannot (or should not) be said. Likewise, regarding the class- room faculty member, Farber makes it clear he believes that librarians and class- room faculty play complementary, but wholly distinct, roles in the educational process. In his introduction to the collec- tion, Richard Werking correctly identifies this aspect of Farber’s vision as one that is somewhat at odds with current thinking and practice in academic libraries. Which brings us back to the missed opportunity so evident in this collection. Evan Farber’s writings are already widely available in the literature, and what the field needed was not another container in which Farber’s work could be housed, but, rather, an opportunity for today’s leading college and instruction librar- ians to explore and debate the ongoing significance of his ideas and his life’s work. Given this need, it is ironic that the first piece in this collection—“College Librarians and the University-Library Syndrome” (1974)—was written for a volume prepared in honor of Farber ’s mentor at Emory University, Guy Lyle.2 As a whole, this collection left me looking forward to a similar volume to be pre- pared in Farber’s.—Scott Walter, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Notes 1. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 147–60. 2. Evan I. Farber and Ruth Walling, eds., The Academic Library: Essays in Honor of Guy R. Lyle (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974). Jeanneney, Jean-Noël. Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 92p. alk. pa- Book Reviews 191 per, $11 (paper); $18 (cloth) (ISBN 0226395782;0226395774). LC 2006- 19650. This short book by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, former president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, is an updated and revised version of Quand Google défie l’Europe: Plaidoyer pour un sursaut, first published in France in 2005. As he himself notes, many immediately mistranslated the word “défie” as “defy”; more cor- rectly, the word means “challenge,” and in this long essay, Jeanneney seeks not to condemn Google (and by extension, all digitization projects), but to challenge that company and its legions of users to ponder the implications of digitizing the contents of many of the world’s large research libraries. Jeanneney writes from his perspective as a scholar of political sci- ence and history and as leader of one of Europe’s most important cultural institu- tions. His concern that the availability of large numbers of freely available English- language publications on the Web might nurture a peculiarly American view of the world was one of the main emphases of his original essay in Le Monde. Here, while Jeanneney retains that concern about American cultural dominance, he has set himself (and librarians and archivists) a larger challenge. As Ian E. Wilson, Librar- ian and Archivist of Canada, notes in his introduction to the book, Jeanneney is moving beyond questions of technology and professional practice to questions about “fundamental cultural policy is- sues” and “the nature of the global infor- mation infrastructure.” Jeanneney opens his book with a recollection of his reaction to the an- nouncement of Google’s plans to digitize the contents of five major research librar- ies (including the Bodleian, which, he notes ruefully, looked across the Atlantic rather than across the English Channel to form a partnership). While pleased at the potential that mass digitization could have for providing access to ev- eryone, Jeanneney also felt anxiety over the nature of the Google project: “An indeterminate, disorganized, unclassi- fied, uninventoried profusion is of little interest.” Unlike Google’s owners, whose goal is to digitize everything, Jeanneney believes that “there can be no universal library … Choices are always made, and must be made.” Since it will be impos- sible to digitize all the millions of books ever printed, some principles of selection must be developed. The process of selec- tion, says Jeanneney, will pit cultural and intellectual impulses against commercial interests; thus, the need for public institu- tions (such as the European Union and its cultural institutions) to fi nance and plan for digitizing a collection—that is, an intellectually coherent array of materi- als. Moreover, argues Jeanneney, public institutions must do this, because only they have the mission and commitment to preserve digital materials for the long term and for the common good. In a chapter entitled “Remarkable Progress,” Jeanneney scoffs at those who have no use for the Internet; they are “malcontents,” “people living in the past.” The chapter addresses the “formi- dable ambivalence” of that “marvelous invention,” the Web. He points to the benefits of the Web for researchers and citizens far from the economic and po- litical mainstream. But neither does Jean- neney believe that the birth of the Internet means the death of the book. Rather, the Web will bring new life to forgotten or hard-to-find books and, at the same time, enhance the status of librarians, archivists, and booksellers. “Librarians have always helped to organize chaos,” says Jeanneney; with mass digitization (a term, by the way, that Jeanneney does not use), librarians will “stand beside professors and schoolteachers as essential intermediaries of knowledge.” Jeanneney considers the issue of digi- tization and the forces of the marketplace by contrasting the development of radio, television, and the film industries in the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. He suggests that the public subsidy of those industries in Europe best 192 College & Research Libraries supports European culture and invention and that advertising (in these media and on the Web) can be problematic, given the naïveté of some users. Jeanneney does not reject public-private partnerships out of hand but clearly is in favor of giving primary control of intellectual capital to public institutions and governments. In a chapter entitled “Hyperpower,” Jean- neney links Google’s potential dominance with U.S. political hegemony. He com- ments on the Bush presidency, American support for the death penalty, the invasion of Baghdad and the looting and loss of Iraq’s cultural treasures, and the United States’ general go-it-alone attitude on issues such as the environment and the international criminal court. Jeanneney is wearing his politics on his sleeve here, I think, but he uses all this to suggest that the United States and Europe are fun- damentally different, and that a similar dominance of the Internet by Google will lead to “unilateral control over the think- ing of the world,” and even censorship. Europe must present some competition to Google and to the dominance of the English language across the globe, not just through digitization but also through the creation of a European search engine. Another of Jeanneney’s prime concerns is Google’s “apparent indifference to … long-term preservation and conserva- tion.” This, he says, has long been the mission of public institutions, and Jean- neney challenges them to take on what Google cannot or will not. Google and, by extension, the Internet are experiencing the “arrogance” of all new media, which believe that they will sweep away all that came before. What Jeanneney off ers is a “cultural and industrial project” that builds upon the existing strengths of our cultural institutions and the people who work in them. Instead of mass digitiza- tion, Jeanneney suggests careful selec- tion of materials; instead of “massive amounts of disorganized information,” he proposes the Ariadne’s thread of clas- sification of some sort. National libraries, publishers, government funding agencies, March 2008 and all book people need to be involved in this effort. Some readers of this book will not be convinced by Jeanneney. Some readers will fail to see any nuance in his argument. At times, he is too Eurocentric (and perhaps a bit defensive?); at times, this reader won- dered whether we have the time, money, and luxury to proceed in the ideal fashion Jeanneney proposes. But Jeanneney’s book invites librarians and the library profession to consider the ways in which the Google project has the potential to transform research, reading, and notions of intellec- tual property for good or ill. Will Google become a version of Borges’ “Library of Babel,” or make information universally available to those whose call it is to shape information into knowledge?—Cecile M. Jagodzinski, Indiana University. Markham, Sheila. A Book of Booksellers: Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade 1991–2003. 1st pbk. ed. London: Sheila Markham Rare Books; New Cas- tle, Del.: Oak Knoll, 2007. 323p. $29.95 (ISBN 1584562072). LC 2007-18615. There is a long tradition of anecdotal his- tories of British booksellers, a profession which from the beginning seems to have attracted eccentrics in inexhaustible vari- ety. An early specimen of the genre was the autobiographical Life and Errors of John Dunton, Late Citizen of London, published in 1705, a gossipy and highly diverting look at the world 300 years ago through the eyes of a widely traveled London book- seller. Recalling his visit to colonial Boston in the 1680s, Dunton by turns praises and lambastes the booksellers, printers, and other merchants he meets there. Typical of Dunton’s mixture of praise and invective is his note about Minheer (=Mr.) Brunning, “a Dutch bookseller from Holland”: He never decries a Book, because ’tis not of his own printing; there are some Men that will run down the most Elaborate Pieces, only because they had none of their MID- WIFERY to bring ’em into publick