Book Reviews 605

management software, both proprietary 
and open-source.

Chapters 8–10 discuss newer devel-
opments in access to library materials. 
Chapter 8 covers the use of social media, 
especially Facebook, as a means of pro-
viding remote access to library materials 
and whether this would be effective, 
given copyright restrictions. Chapter 
9 discusses mobile technologies such 
as smartphones, tablets, and netbooks, 
and the resulting ability to access library 
materials anywhere, whenever needed. 
Chapter 10 discusses virtual libraries, 
with a focus on e-books, the specific 
technology necessary to read them, and 
the limitations to their use.

Chapter 11 explores the technological 
problems that remote access can create. 
It focuses on the technological means of 
ensuring that only authorized users have 
access to materials, but it also touches on 
the problems of resources that cannot be 
viewed on mobile devices, collections that 
are difficult to search, and the occasional 
need to enter multiple passwords to ac-
cess remote resources from off-campus. 

Chapter 12 is a summary of the whole 
book, tying together chapters 1–11 but 
also surveying the means by which librar-
ies can improve their service to users via 
remote access to resources and future 
developments that could make an even 
greater number of resources accessible to 
even greater user populations. Fulkerson 
does not follow the popular conception 
that increased remotely accessible materi-
als means an end to libraries, rather:

“Libraries will not go out of existence, 
but they will offer more services to their 
remote users because of improvements 
in technology. […] The library of [the] 
21st century will be a place where users 
can find the resources they need without 
having to set foot in the building.” 

Remote Access Technologies for Library 
Collections: Tools for Library Users and Man-
agers is easy to read, containing thorough 
discussions of the issues in short chapters. 
In addition to the general bibliography, 
each chapter contains its own list of refer-

ences, allowing it to stand alone if need 
be, and it is well-indexed. As higher edu-
cation in general, and libraries in specific, 
move forward in pace with technological 
developments, the demand for remotely 
accessible materials will only continue to 
grow; therefore, this book is vital reading 
not just for librarians who work directly 
with digital materials, but for academic 
librarians in all disciplines.—Deborah 
DeGeorge, University of Michigan.

Char Booth. Reflective Teaching, Effective 
Learning: Instructional Literacy for Li-
brary Educators. Chicago, Ill.: American 
Library Association, 2011. 180p. alk. 
paper, $60.00 (ISBN 9780838910528). 
LC 2010-14026.

Stepping into the classroom as a teacher 
can be daunting for the novice and expe-
rienced educator alike. To help prepare 
librarians for the classroom as well as 
other instructional settings, Char Booth 
provides a two-part book, the first consist-
ing of a theoretical discussion of reflec-
tive teaching and the second a practical 
guide of teaching tools. While there are 
other excellent, recent books about library 
instruction, Booth’s Reflective Teaching, 
Effective Learning is distinctive in its focus 
on developing a reflective approach that 
extends beyond simply explaining what 
to do in the classroom. For Booth, to teach 
is to understand one’s own presence as 
a teacher as well as to understand how 
students and other library patrons learn.

Booth was a 2007 ALA Emerging 
Leader and a 2008 Library Journal mover 
and shaker, noted for her work on library 
instruction and technology literacy. She 
has spoken widely on the topic of in-
structional literacy and led workshops 
for librarians with the USER method she 
presents in this book. Although she works 
often with multimedia and technology 
literacy, she touches on teaching technol-
ogy in this book as only one aspect of 
providing the resources necessary for 
addressing students’ informational needs.

Booth begins with some autobio-
graphical reflections on her own entry 



606 College & Research Libraries November 2012

into library instruction, noting that, like 
many librarians, as clearly as she felt 
called to librarianship, she was “thrown 
into teaching” with little preparation 
in graduate school or training in her 
job. Additionally, like many academic 
librarians, she found herself taking on 
a heavy instructional role beyond basic 
bibliographic and library resources 
instruction. The simple fact that Booth 
begins with, then, is that librarians must 
realize the extent of instruction in our 
work, from explaining tasks to coworkers 
and summarizing information for teams 
to instructing individual patrons on us-
ing databases or teaching classrooms full 
of students on information literacy and 
more. Embracing instruction as a core 
aspect of librarianship, therefore, makes 
instructional literacy a useful compo-
nent of librarians’ ongoing professional 
development.

Booth provides a succinct overview 
of instructional literacy in the theoretical 
portion of the book, focusing on concepts 
such as teacher identity, instructional 
philosophy, and personal learning en-
vironments. In this overview, she asks 
readers to reflect on the qualities of good 
and bad teachers in our own experiences 
as students as a way of exploring what 
effective teachers do and how they pres-
ent themselves. This type of personal 
reflection is crucial to Booth’s conception 
of reflective teaching. She then turns this 
discussion toward developing a personal 
teaching philosophy and honing a core 
instructional message for each learning 
situation. 

The crux of Booth’s approach is meta-
cognition, which is about intentional-
ity or a “constructive self-awareness in 
teaching.” Booth further breaks down the 
components of teaching that a successful 
teacher can monitor and reflect on, such 
as knowing what knowledge and skills 
the learners already possess and what in-
structional materials and technology will 
be available and useful for instruction. To 
wrap up the theoretical discussion, Booth 
synthesizes learning theory and provides 

a few different concepts as well as schools 
of thought on how people learn. Most 
important, Booth advocates for librarians 
to create communities of practice to sus-
tain reflective teaching and constructive 
dialogues about classroom experiences.

Although the chapters in Part I all 
include activities that encourage readers 
to reflect on teaching and learning experi-
ences, the chapters in Part II most clearly 
break down the teaching experience into 
steps and tasks that both novice and expe-
rienced educators can follow to develop 
a more reflective teaching practice. Booth 
provides the USER instructional design 
model, consisting of the steps Under-
stand, Structure, Engage, and Reflect, 
which move a teacher from planning to 
implementing and revising lessons. Booth 
devotes a chapter full of concrete sugges-
tions for each step of the model.

Connecting the USER method to her 
call for all librarians to develop commu-
nities of practice, Booth emphasizes the 
point that teaching happens in highly spe-
cific contexts framed by the larger institu-
tion’s culture and needs. She identifies the 
shifting landscape of library instruction 
in libraries and argues that reflective 
teaching and communities of practice 
encourage librarians to take proactive 
steps in providing effective learning 
environments rather than simply wait-
ing for users to ask for help. She notes, 
“USER is both a means of perceiving how 
you can contribute useful knowledge 
to local communities of practice, and a 
method for structuring your response. By 
engaging productively in the discourse 
and activities of your user community 
(a process that conflates embedding and 
outreach) you become better equipped to 
discern local educational opportunities 
when they arise and generate high-impact 
products.”

In Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning, 
Booth provides a solid introduction to 
learning theory as a basis for reflective 
teaching. Like other books on teaching, 
Booth thoughtfully balances a need to 
provide solid teaching tools for novice 



Book Reviews 607

teachers—lifelines, as it were—while 
explaining the need to adapt constantly 
since each learning situation is different 
and dynamic, dependent upon the spe-
cific student’s prior knowledge, level of 
engagement, and other factors often out-
side a teacher’s control. In foregrounding 
the importance of metacognition, Booth 
offers the foundations for maintaining 
a solid footing in the classroom while 
understanding how to assess the specific 
needs of each classroom to adapt a les-
son design on the fly.—Paul Lai, Saint 
Catherine University.

Information Literacy: Infiltrating the 
Agenda, Challenging Minds. Eds. 
Geoff Walton and Alison Pope. Ox-
ford, U.K.: Chandos Publishing, 
2011. Distributed in the U.S. by Neal-
Schuman Publishers. 322p., $90 (ISBN: 
9781843346104).

The articles in this 2011 anthology 
emerged from the Staffordshire Univer-
sity Information Literacy Community of 
Practice (SUILCoP), a group primarily 
active from 2006 to 2010 and representing 
more than 50 U.K. organizations, princi-
pally in postsecondary education. The 
collection is intended to provide informa-
tion about specific information literacy 
(IL) initiatives and related issues, as well 
as to form the foundation for a call to ac-
tion during a time of perceived economic 
peril for IL programs within U.K. higher 
education. Although the case studies and 
some of the discussions are specific to 
the U.K. context, there is a lot of fuel for 
information literacy practitioners in any 
21st-century library, and the call to action 
is relevant across cash-strapped nations.

The editors are both heavily involved 
with IL-curriculum integration at Staf-
fordshire. Alison Pope is Learning and 
Information Services Manager and 
cocreator of the award-winning Assign-
ment Survival Kit (ASK) tutorial (www.
staffs.ac.uk/ask/), and Geoff Walton is 
Academic Skills Tutor Librarian and 
Senior Researcher. The two previously 
coedited Information Literacy: Recognizing 

the Need (Chandos, 2006) and coauthored 
“Information and Media Literacies: 
Sharpening Our Vision in the Twenty 
First Century” for the collection Issues in 
Information and Media Literacy: Education, 
Practice and Pedagogy (Informing Science, 
2009). The twelve papers that form the 
main body of this book are contributed 
by individuals who research, teach, and 
program information literacy across the 
United Kingdom. 

The book is divided into three sec-
tions. Collaboration, Curriculum, and 
Courses features articles focused on 
IL-curriculum integration throughout 
the undergraduate career, workplace 
learning, and 21st-century pedagogical 
methods. The Development, Dialogue, 
and Design papers address IL integration 
across the curriculum, as well as practical 
approaches to development of reusable 
learning objects (designed for repurpos-
ing across institutions) and video and 
film materials. The final section, Obesity, 
Overload, and Opportunity seems both 
ambitious and forward-thinking, featur-
ing discussions of the political nature of 
IL instruction, the impact to IL of sweep-
ing changes to modes of communication 
and learning, and the use of assessment 
measures to identify specific areas of IL 
instruction in the United Kingdom that 
may merit revised or additional instruc-
tion. In reality, the articles share themes 
and foci across the sections. Since Pope 
and Walton, in their introduction, fail to 
clarify the distinctions between them, the 
alliterative section titles are somewhat 
distracting.

A number of the represented authors 
employ a global perspective. For example, 
Jillian R. Griffiths and Bob Glass report 
on their implementation at Manchester 
Metropolitan University of an informa-
tion literacy assessment test originally de-
veloped in the United States and based on 
ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency 
Standards for Higher Education (2000). 
Identifying areas for future intervention 
and considering the specific context of 
U.K. higher education, Griffiths and Glass