terry cook,editors, ,controlling the past: documenting society and institutions: essays in honor of...

digital technology on our very purpose. There is no way around thisdiscussion, as painful as it may be. A manager or director could doeverything right with respect to a change initiative, but if thatinitiative amounts to a fundamental re-purpose of the library that willbe bound to cause resistance. Sometimes the only way to get to theother side is to push on through.—Marcus Banks, Director, GrazianoMemorial Library/Academic & Instructional Innovation, SamuelMerritt University, 450 30th Street, Suite 2840, Oakland, CA 94609,USA bmbanks@samuelmerritt.eduN.

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2011.06.012

Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions: Essaysin Honor of Helen Willa Samuels, by Terry Cook. Chicago: Society ofAmerican Archivists, 2011. 442 pp. $56.00. ISBN 1-931666-36-9.

Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions: Essays inHonor of HelenWilla Samuels is a collection of 18 essays to honor retiredMassachusetts Institute of Technology archivist Helen Willa Samuels.The festschrift examines the importance of Samuels' ideas in thecontext of contemporary archival practice and analyzes the rolearchivists play in creating social memory. The book's premise,according to editor Terry Cook, addresses, “how, in documentingmodern societies and their institutions, the archivist's control of thepast may be transformed in ways more appropriate for our twenty-first-century world” (p. 4).

The book is divided into two sections, “Documenting Society”and “Representing Archives/Being Archival,” followed by a pair ofretrospective reflections. The penultimate essay, “Making BetterProfessionals: Reflections on Selected Writings of Helen WillaSamuels,” written by Elisabeth Kaplan, summarizes Samuels' consid-erable additions to archival theory and practice.

One contribution is documentation strategy, a methodology thatguides selection to retain knowledge about topics dispersed through-out society. Her theory was articulated in the seminal 1986 AmericanArchivist article, “Who Controls the Past,” which Kaplan asserts is,“one of the most frequently cited writings on archives in the English-speaking world, and is still a constant presence on archival studiescourse syllabi” (p. 388). Samuels was the first archivist to evokethe dystopian world of George Orwell's 1984 as she advocated fortechniques to support the selection of records in an information-rich society. Cook writes in the introductory essay, “In rethinkingfundamentally how the archivist should undertake appraisal, HelenSamuels made the archivist's control of the past more conscious, moreactive, and more inclusive. She pushed her profession to consideranew the most central archival function that determines the verynature of the archive that remains” (p. 1).

Samuels's second noteworthy contribution is institutional func-tional analysis, a technique that sets priorities for appraising andprocessing materials of a department based on the relative impor-tance of its functions in an organization. This is best explored inSamuels' 1992 masterwork Varsity Letters: Documenting ModernColleges and Universities. In his essay, “Designs for Records andRecordkeeping: Visual Presentation in Diplomatics, the RecordContinuum, and Documentation Strategy,” Brien Brothman notesthat Samuels's book, “emphasize[d] the importance for archivists tolook beyond their own institutional boundaries and interests and totake heed of the complex organizational, technological, and socialrelationships in which institutions and their records are inevitablyembedded” (p. 303).

In the final essay, Samuels tries to “understand [her] journey, theleitmotifs that have guided it, and the threads that have bound ittogether” (p. 397). After receiving her bachelor's degree inmusic fromQueens College, she was trained as a librarian at Simmons College,

then became an archivist at MIT, where she learned archival methodson the job. Like many archivists, she took a circuitous route in hercareer, yet felt destined to her profession.

Controlling the Past: Documenting Society and Institutions: Essays inHonor of Helen Willa Samuels is recommended reading for archivistsand archival students, because it explores the continuing impactof Samuels' writing and the symbiotic relationship between institu-tional functional analysis and documentation strategy with essayswritten by the most illustrious minds in the archival world.—MargotNote, Director of Archives and Information Management, WorldMonuments Fund, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2412, New York, NY10118, USA bmnote@wmf.orgN.

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2011.06.013

Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning: Instructional Literacy forLibrary Educators, by Char Booth. Chicago: American LibraryAssociation, 2011. 180 pp. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-8389-1052-8.

Char Booth has created a highly useful and interactive teachingguide in Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning. As is common inlibrarianship, many librarians do not take education classes or anysignificant instruction-related courses in library school. Thus, learningto teach on the job is normal practice that numerous librarians oftenencounter. The purpose of this work is to present the fundamentals oflearning and teaching in order for librarians to become aware of thebasic theories and principles that they can utilize in their instructionsessions.

Booth's work is comprised of two parts: Instructional Literacy andThe User Method. In the first part the author outlines the four elementsof instructional literacy: reflective practice, educational theory, teachingtechnologies and instructional design. Reflective practice calls forlibrarians to assess previous experiences before tackling new ones andnot just after an instruction session has taken place. Educational theoryincorporates learning theory, instructional theory and curriculumtheory, which are fundamental aspects to teaching and learningpractices. Teaching technologies are essential to know in this agewhen multiple electronic and digital tools are available for deliveringinstruction. Instructional design is the method of using the previousthree elements to develop a system for delivering an effectiveinstruction interaction. After addressing each of these elements, Booth'sultimate goal is for the reader to productively use theory and practice inorder to become more effective library instructors. In part two, Boothoutlines the USER instructional design method and teaches the readerhow to “understand,” “structure,” “engage,” and “reflect” on libraryteaching. With the USER method, library teachers will learn to identifyand evaluate the instructional needs of their learners, develop usefulinstructional material, deliver the material, and assess the outcome ofeach teaching experience in order to learn and improve.

Each chapter of part one, Instructional Literacy, begins with a listingof the goals and ends with a summary and reflection points. Addi-tionally, the work contains a USER design template, a glossary andsurvey responses from librarians expressing their desires to improvetheir teaching. This book is for every librarian who delivers any formof instruction and for library school students who want to get ahead ofthe curve as they begin their careers in librarianship. The strategiesand tools that Booth presents are insightful and indispensable foranyone desiring to improve their planning, delivery and assessment oflibrary education.—Andrea Malone, Assistant Librarian, University ofHouston, M. D. Anderson Library, 114 University Libraries, Houston,TX 77204, USA barmalone@uh.eduN.

doi:10.1016/j.acalib.2011.06.014

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