866 College & Research Libraries September 2017

the existence of the tools. This is an area where transformation is occurring and has 
opportunities for greater transformation.

Lest one would think this topic might not be included, Nisa Bakkalbasi writes 
about assessment, with added attention to marketing. She reviews the history and the 
current state of evaluation, presenting quantitative and qualitative methods that are 
employed, emphasizing that assessment is cyclical. The research bases of determining 
needs and then assessing the results is examined. Marketing is also related to a culture 
of assessment, a culture that integrates change into a formative means of improvement.

Ronald Jantz is charged with what is perhaps the most challenging essay—looking 
into the future. He admits to the overburdened state of libraries and librarians within 
the institutions as they exist today. Jantz recaps, in some ways, the topics that precede 
his, but he examines such items as research and marketing with an eye to the future. 
It is difficult to summarize Jantz’s essay, because he tackles so many issues so well. 
Suffice it to say that his essay culminates the volume in an excellent fashion. 

There are two additional aspects of the book—very positive aspects—that need to 
be mentioned. Each essay includes either extensive notes or bibliographies; these are 
extremely useful for practicing professionals and for teachers and students. The other 
aspect is the inclusion in each essay of activity questions and assignments. It is this 
aspect that lends the book most readily to instructional use, giving potential students 
prompts according to which they can ponder seriously the meaning and implications 
of the topics presented. In short, Gilman has done a real service in putting together a 
uniformly excellent volume. First, all academic libraries should acquire the book for 
professional development purposes. Second, academic programs should give serious 
consideration to using this book in instruction. As collections of essays go, this book 
is exceptional.—John M. Budd, University of Missouri

Mark Aaron Polger and Scott Sheidlower. Engaging Diverse Learners: Teaching Strate-
gies for Academic Librarians. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 164p. 
Paper, $60.00 (ISBN 978-1-4408-3850-7).

Academic librarians in teaching roles face a recurring challenge to make connections 
with students that result in student learning of the desired content. Defining “engage-
ment” in terms of these connections, authors Mark Aaron Polger and Scott Sheidlower 
seek to provide a practical guide to a number of approaches to engaging students in 
both semester-long and “one-shot” instructional opportunities. With the recognition 
that our students come to college from a diversity of backgrounds and with a range 
of learning styles, the authors hope to inspire the reader to seek out and use different 
techniques to improve student engagement. Unfortunately, the brevity of both their 
presentation’s original analysis, or synthesis of the cited research, limits the effective-
ness of this book in achieving this goal.

A very short chapter looks at generational differences in learning styles. The narra-
tive does not examine any of the differences between generations other than through 
easy generalities that most readers will have a level of familiarity with before reading 
the book. Few readers will gain insights here.

Another short chapter is devoted to “Examining Diverse Learning Groups,” yet the 
only diverse learning groups discussed are the disabled, veterans, LGBTQIA, students 
of color, and English language learners. Only half a page was devoted to discussing 
the English language learners, and the students of color section only covers in depth 
“hip-hop pedagogy,” an approach that does not take into account that students of 
color may be Asian, American Indian, Latinx, or any other category. The section on 
gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and intersex students is thorough 
and helpful to the reader in understanding how to better relate to these students. One 

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https://doi.org10.5860/crl.78.6.866


Book Reviews 867

would hope that other learning groups would receive the same treatment. Arguably, 
the reader would expect a chapter that paints a picture of diverse learning groups to 
have more diversely vivid detail and insights, given the title of the book.

A core chapter of the book, chapter 4, presents the results of a questionnaire of aca-
demic librarians on engagement and teaching strategies. This questionnaire appears 
as an appendix in the book. The survey responses come from an impressive number 
of academic librarians (900), and the authors extended their study by conducting 20 
in-depth interviews. The work Polger and Sheidlower have done in this chapter would 
make an ample research article for a peer-reviewed journal. The authors could provide 
additional insight and make the interview portion of the chapter more coherent for 
the reader by synthesizing the in-depth interview discussions, grouping commonly 
expressed ideas and insights together, rather than presenting each librarian’s interview 
transcript summary in sequence.

The remaining chapters of the book follow a pattern in providing brief summaries 
of selected resources that provided useful ideas for the authors in their teaching roles. 
Findings from these articles are presented but not evaluated or analyzed in more than 
a cursory fashion. The lack of originality in suggested techniques and approaches in 
these chapters, as well as the absence of depth in discussion of the many techniques 
presented, will frustrate readers. Polger and Sheidlower are at their best when describ-
ing personal anecdotes from their teaching experiences. Spending more time and space 
connecting their experiences with diverse learners, their insights upon reflecting on 
those experiences, and their findings and interpretation of additional ideas and tech-
niques in the teaching research literature would make the book more engaging.—Scott 
Curtis, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Cinthya M. Ippoliti and Rachel W. Gammons. User-Centered Design for First Year 
Library Instruction Programs. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited, 2017. 192p. 
Paper, $60.00 (ISBN 9781440838521). LC 2016-032797.

Information literacy is evolving. To address this evolution of library instruction, the 
authors of User-Centered Design for First Year Library Instruction Programs argue that the 
student and his or her needs must take center stage when designing library instruction 
programs. A rapidly changing digital and information landscape requires librarians to 
adjust how they teach and what content is included in those instruction sessions. The 
new era of “fake news” requires librarians to move away from focusing on students’ 
current needs and instead step back to consider the future where critical thinking is 
the ultimate tool in a student’s toolkit to address unknown issues and information 
requirements. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) developed 
The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education in part as a response to this 
new and seemingly altered landscape where much of the underlying focus is on the 
students’ personal relationship with information literacy. Ippoliti and Gammons argue 
that user-centered design can help librarians to incorporate this and other elements 
of Framework by always keeping users at the center of their thoughts when planning 
library instruction, a method that should firmly ground an instruction program.

Ippoliti and Gammons present an engaging examination of using user-centered 
design to plan library instruction programs. This book is targeted toward librarians 
whose primary or main job task is to coordinate or manage a library instruction pro-
gram. However, the book is easily accessible and highly engaging, and other librarians 
currently providing more “one-shots” than programmatic instruction will find this a 
useful tool to begin transforming their work into a cohesive and sequential informa-
tion literacy program. The authors begin their writing with a thorough introduction 
that clearly outlines the intent of their work and, importantly, note that the sections 

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https://doi.org10.5860/crl.78.6.867