Book Reviews 593

more prevalent general literature. Part II 
begins with Michael J. Prasse and Lynn 
Silipigni Connaway sharing techniques 
and methods of usability testing of library 
Web sites while also addressing studies 
on usability testing methodology. Finally, 
Part II ends with Martha Kyrillidou, Col-
leen Cook, and S. Shyam Sunder Rao 
reviewing the literature on LibQUAL+, 
a library service quality measurement 
tool developed by ARL and Texas A&M 
University. 

In this collection, Radford and Snelson 
have assembled an accessible, readable 
work that addresses important theories 
and practices, providing a helpful guide 
to an academic librarian looking to 
supplement his or her own understanding 
of current research in the field, enhance 
the theoretical underpinnings of her own 
practices, collect practical tips and meth-
ods applicable in the library setting, and 
identify possibilities for future research.

If there is a weakness in this work, 
it might be that its areas of emphasis 
are disproportionate. Part I has broader 
coverage, while Part II could stand to be 
similarly expansive. Libraries are in the 
position of constantly having to justify 
their services and programs to the institu-
tions and constituencies they serve and 
the bodies that accredit them. It is difficult 
to imagine an academic library not subject 
to this increasing emphasis on produc-
ing tangible outcomes and providing 
evidence of the usefulness of its services 
and collections. The body of literature on 
academic library assessment is important, 
substantial, and growing, and Radford 
and Snelson’s collection would have been 
enhanced by more than two chapters on 
assessment and evaluation.—Maria T. Ac-
cardi, Indiana University Southeast.

Mark Bauerlein. The Dumbest Generation: 
How the Digital Age Stupefies Young 
Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future 
(Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). New 
York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008. 
264p. $24.95 (ISBN 9781585426393). 
LC2008-006690.

It would be easy to dismiss this book 
as the frustrated rant of a Baby Boomer 
professor, a “curmudgeon’s grievance” 
(Bauerlein’s phrase; page 174). After all, 
doesn’t each generation, as it ages, and 
especially when it descends the slope of 
middle age, rue the current youth sub-
culture? Don’t they fret and moan about 
how the world is going to hell and that it 
is being led there by the next generation, 
or, at least, that the next generation is 
itself gleefully skipping down the rocky 
way, deep into the nine circles? It would 
be easy to dismiss Bauerlein (Professor 
of English at Emory and former Director 
of Research and Analysis at the National 
Endowment for the Arts) and his book. 

And it would be wrong.
Bauerlein’s thesis is simply stated in the 

subtitle of the book: Digital technologies 
are stupefying young Americans and are 
therefore jeopardizing our future as a 
nation. Anyone who has spent significant 
time surfing the Web, Googling, or jump-
ing from Wikipedia article to Wikipedia 
article probably sympathizes with the 
observation that, after a while, one’s at-
tention span seems to diminish, one has 
less patience for the research process, 
one starts to avoid longish documents 
and sustained, lengthy arguments, pre-
ferring instead the quick Google fix, the 
succinct Wikipedia Word. The Web and 
Web-based technologies are great for 
information storage and retrieval, they 
have no doubt revolutionized the world, 
and those of us who have now spent sig-
nificant segments of our careers in higher 
education designing and deploying them 
know their powers for promoting the 
Good when appropriately and properly 
employed. But they definitely have a stu-
pefying effect as well, no matter your age.

Stir these powerful technologies into 
a narcissistic youth subculture and what 
you end up with is a largely impermeable 
demographic bubble filled with teenagers 
and young adults who use the technolo-
gies deftly, constantly, and continuously 
for intense self-reference and not much 
else. The technological Indra’s Net of 



594 College & Research Libraries November 2009

interconnection is no longer cast as wide 
as the human universe. Rather, each jewel 
in the Net now simply reflects every other 
jewel, each one an adolescent with a cell 
phone welded to his head and a chat room 
burning on his screen. 

I remember being a high school junior, 
sitting in Mr. Ford’s geometry class when 
he admonished us guys in the back of the 
room, snapping his fingers, “Let’s please 
be quiet back there and pay attention. We 
are not here to socialize.” And I think we 
genuinely, though tacitly, understood this. 
Our socializing was at best an adjunct to 
what we were sitting there for: to learn 
geometry. At worst, it was a deterrent. 
In both cases, our socializing was beside 
the point, and deep down we knew it. 
The whole point of being in school was 
to study, to learn, and to somehow tran-
scend our mundane, ignorant, adolescent 
selves—not to amplify them. The whole 
point was to grow beyond the narrow 
bounds of our individual, idiosyncratic 
comfort zones—not to crawl into them so 
far that we were beyond reach.

As Bauerlein points out, it used to be 
that a teenager’s social life ended at his 
parents’ front door. Once inside, the only 
connection to the outside was a single 
land line (“Don’t tie up the phone!”) and 
three channels on TV, preprogrammed 
for broadcasts we didn’t always want to 
see. And yet, isn’t frequent solitude and 
confrontation with the Other (“Do we have 
to watch 60 Minutes?”) at the very root of 
education and enlightenment?

Now, though, the adolescent social 
life is a mere click away, any time of day 
or night. It’s even accessible via the Wii 
in the living room. And it’s never been 
easier to simply stare at the screen and 
let the world around you—the world 
of adults, and books, and nature, and 
sports, and musical instruments, and 
maybe even TV shows you don’t want 
to watch—fade away. After all, your 
friends are sitting at that very moment, 
just like you, staring at the other side of 
the screen, your mirror image reflected 
to infinity.

The six chapter titles of the book 
accurately indicate its content and pro-
gression:

• Knowledge Deficits
• The New Bibliophobes
• Screen Time
• Online Learning and Non-Learning
• The Betrayal of the Mentors
• No More Culture Warriors
Bauerlein is in a good position to 

judge the decline in basic knowledge 
among young people, both anecdotally 
as a professor at a prominent American 
university and more rigorously as a 
senior administrator at one of our most 
important cultural funding agencies. He 
begins the book with a quick chapter de-
tailing the recent research and statistics in 
this area. The numbers are sobering and 
provide the backdrop for all that follows. 
Declines in knowledge of basic facts, 
declines in scientific and mathematical 
competencies, declines in rates of read-
ing for pleasure and a surge in aliteracy, 
all with concomitant increases in “screen 
time” of one form or another—such is the 
educational milieu in which a significant 
number of Americans under age 30 find 
themselves. Particularly alarming is the 
attitude that often accompanies this, as 
Bauerlein relates in the most entertaining 
and edifying chapter in the book, “The Be-
trayal of the Mentors.” Dues paying is for 
chumps; rigorous training obscures one’s 
grand, idiosyncratic Vision; tradition is to 
be ignored because it has nothing new to 
offer; and impertinence is, so it appears, 
now a key virtue—and all this, as Bauer-
lein illustrates, with the complicity of the 
mentors themselves.

It’s fairly obvious how this might 
impact higher education and academic 
librarianship: These are our new clients; 
they comprise the student body. If what 
Bauerlein says is true, then, especially 
with respect to technology addiction 
and intense peer-focused socializing, 
we should expect to see a drop in mono-
graphic circulations along with a corre-
sponding rise in use of library-provided 
electronic resources, the library’s wireless 



Book Reviews 595

network, and library social spaces such as 
common study areas, cafés, etc. So ques-
tion: Do the statistics at your institution 
bear this out? They do at mine.

Why is this a bad thing? It’s not, 
necessarily. Provision and usage of our 
resources and services is what we are 
here for. But when that usage becomes, 
perhaps abruptly, perhaps through a sea 
change, significantly lopsided, at some 
point it does become a bad thing. When 
the monographic and special collections 
lie fallow, their value comes into question. 
We as librarians know their value, many 
of us still wander the stacks in wonder 
and awe, many of us take it all for granted. 
Others do not.

I suppose it is the same with any 
cultural institution. End your patronage 
of the local museum, and the treasures 
of beauty, sublimity, and genius housed 
there may eventually fall from the walls.

What is to be done?
Is it ironic that I think we should ap-

plaud those librarians among us who 
communicate with the under-30 crowd 
using their preferred technologies, in their 
native habitats? Increased library usage 
of MySpace, blogs, and Twitter does not 
necessarily herald the end of civilization; 
rather, it is the first step in communicat-
ing with our clientele on their own terms. 
These are perfectly good tools to use to 
lure them in to witness for themselves the 
rest of what we have to offer. These tools 
can and are being used to promote the 
Good, where “Good” stands for the full 
and rich range of services and resources 
we provide. And just as I, here at mature 
middle-age (although we all know 46 is 
the new 25), much prefer e-mail to the 
telephone, so too do the under-30 crowd 
prefer Facebook to anything else.

So be it. Let’s meet them where they 
live and lead them from there back to the 
stacks. Maybe Virgil, the reference librar-
ian, can guide a sophomore through the 
reference stacks, pointing out important 
works along the way, before delivering 
him upstairs in time for his 2:15 appoint-
ment with Bea in Special Collections? 

And maybe that appointment was made 
through Google Calendar?

Twitter feed #865217: Tpmost flr 
lbrary, lavnder latx glvs, paging 
thru old Hieronymus Bosch rprodc-
tions. Drk & scary like Diablo 3. 
Incred. Who knw?! BTW Bea looks 
angelic…

This message sent from T-Mobile 
Sidekick™ {ts '2009-10-07 14:37:23'}

(I think I just heard an English profes-
sor groan, all the way from Atlanta.)

I remember standing in the grocery 
checkout several years ago, enduring 
the young woman in front of me speak-
ing loudly into her cell phone for all 
to hear:

“Yes. Yes. I painted them last night. I 
clipped them, then I painted them. Bright 
red.”

All this technology and she’s reporting 
on the current condition of her toenails? 
There are appropriate uses of technology 
and inappropriate uses of technology 
and surely one inappropriate use is to 
magnify inanity.

Precisely Bauerlein’s point.
It would be so easy to label Bauerlein a 

grouchy fuddy-duddy and to dismiss his 
warnings as Henny-Penny overreactions. 
But then you realize how true to life his 
picture of the current situation is. 

You realize this when your darling new 
fourteen-year-old stepdaughter picks up 
her cell phone and starts texting—at the 
dinner table.—Mark Cyzyk, The Sheridan 
Libraries, Johns Hopkins University.

Jack Simpson. Basics of Genealogy Refer-
ence: A Librarian’s Guide. Westport, 
Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2008. 176p. 
alk. paper, $40 (ISBN 9781591585145). 
LC2008-010596. 

Jack Simpson’s new book succeeds in 
meeting the needs of two distinct audi-
ences: those seeking a very basic starting 
strategy for genealogical research and 
those seeking to understand the basics of