Laura Probst outlines the change factors affecting the library: technological, societal, and economic. Technology is clearly one of the main forces driving change in libraries, and most of the chapters deal with its impact. Arthur Young and Thomas Peters of Northern Illinois University discuss the philo- sophical impact of the concept of the electronic text. Steven Hearn, Julia Kelly, and Catherine Robbins sketch the effects of electronics on cataloging and reference, respectively.

Change also affects personal and professional relationships in libraries. Peggy Johnson gives a comprehensive literature review on the changing roles of professional and non-profes- sional staff, and Steve Marquart covers the changing role of per- formance appraisal.

Jill Fatzer of the University of New Orleans discusses the parallels between Louisiana and Ohio and their response to bud- getary stringencies of a state-wide academic library computer system, realized by very different means.

These type of collections, containing essays of varying length, quality, and subject material, are always a problematical purchase decision. Lacking access to the journal, almost any academic librarian will find something of interest in this vol- ume, depending on the stage in their career. As a director, I par- ticularly enjoyed the chapters by Shaughnessy, Fatzer, and Marquardt. Those concerned about the future of the profession might like the chapters on cataloging and reference and the essay by Probst; and the philosophically inclined can profit from the Young and Peters chapters. While not a comprehensive management guide to managing change, the book provides some thought-provoking ideas, and up-to-date literature reviews on related subjects.-Ron Force, Dean of Library Services, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83843-4198.

No Neutral Ground, by Robert B. Young. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1997. 231~. $31.95. ISBN 07879-0800-2.

The truth, the Bible says, will set you free. In higher educa- tion, however, it often seems as if the truth is actually enslave- ment. In pursuit and protection of Truth, we have chatteled ourselves to political correctness, to calcified viewpoints on the very knowledge we seek to expand, to dogmatic demarcations between administration and faculty, and to obsfucating the sep- aration between academic freedom and academic responsibility.

Now, in a world soon to be populated by literally and figura- tively cloned sheep and where a gambling casino constructed, Disney-esque, to look like New York City is receiving raves for its “authenticity,” it seems the newest, truest Truth to which the Academy has willingly manacled itself is the primacy of free enterprise.

Into this dungeon comes Robert B. Young trying to set us truly free by having us understand, far more importantly, our core values. These core values (service, truth, freedom, individ- uation, equality, justice, and community), he reports, are “essential” to higher education and have been tested in several different studies. In No Neutral Ground, Young, professor of education and coordinator of educational leadership at Ohio University, attempts to talk sense into administrators, trustees, and faculty. If we would only see that we can overcome the pressures of free enterprise and, he adds, religion, by pronounc- ing a return to these core values, then we could somehow sur- mount the ongoing attempts at change.

In essence, Young’s ideas at first seem sound. He describes the need for the Academy to respond to the clarion call, being heard more and more as reductions in funding, to serve society

more fully. He suggests that our work become “primarily altru- istic.” He discusses the conflict inherent between capitalism and democracy. He ends with a checklist to examine values within the institution. In the checklist he presents some novel ideas such as “perceiving students as art” to improve teaching and advising; having the president take a seat by “the nearest cam- pus monument [to] see what the people walking by have to say;” and suspending formal grading procedures in favor of having faculty assess whether a student’s “talent” is developing.

What is lacking, however, is that Young does nothing to help raise the voice of a return to values to a decibel that any of his audience (trustees, administrators, or faculty) will and can hear because he speaks only in platitudes. In espousing, for instance, the importance of the Academy in its mission to serve “if it is to fulfill its value to humanity,” Young admits that some faculty have not met this requirement. Thus, he cites reduction in state budgets, particularly Ohio with which he is most familiar. He does link cause-that some professors have not satisfied the public that the need to research and teach gives back to the pub- lic what it wants and expects-with the decrease in state fund- ing. The problem is that he then offers no better solution than to espouse service:

The academy must research and teach and serve for the better- ment of humankind, and it must transcend minimal service in its arguments and deeds. By moving all of its activities toward the application of scholarship, the academy seva-serves. It is no longer fractured by its expertise. Roles disappear, and synergy appears. The people within the academy are connected with those outside. The functions of the academy become a whole, welded together by the value of selfless service. (p. 25)

If only it were that simple. It is this simplistic, platitudinous approach that makes No

Neutral Ground difficult to read, to digest, and to accept the very argument that he makes. Rather than coming away cleansed, there is a pervasive feeling of too-good-ism that makes the reader feel that any variation from the pureness of these seven values is akin to worshiping idols or acting lewdly and lasciviously in the Temple.

Even in his acknowledgment of capitalism, Young speaks in platitudes. Faculty, he writes, need to be convinced to focus on “egoistic altruism,” which he defines as “good service that yields personal rewards.” This focus will yield a “moral spirit and sense of community.” Students can be schooled in the jun- ior-achievement model of enterprise teams. Classrooms should adopt more teamwork.

Sometimes the title of a book speaks more clearly than the prose found on the inside pages. No Neutral Ground is such a manuscript. In espousing the belief that the Academy has seven core values and that it is these values it needs to regenerate itself, Young sets his own stake into already incredibly punc- tured soil. He holds that moral ground by concluding that the academy “cannot yield to simplistic capitalism or rely on self- righteous academic values . . . it must lead with integrity.” This, Young states unequivocally, is “not just a legal requirement, it is its moral opportunity, and thus its essential obligation.”

The moral obligation that higher education really needs to face is the categorical and cold truth that will set it free. We are indeed a business. Thornstein Veblein, at the turn of this current century, acknowledged this truth. We are a capitalistic enter- prise gone just as amok as industry. That authors such as Young continue to couch this fact in terms of values creates the very substance for the barricades between “them and us”-between

330 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

a more than skeptical public and a more than righteous Acad- emy. As long as there is no neutral ground, there will and can only be an embattled field where, in the end, it is knowledge that is vanquished.-Leslie Hitch, Director, Graduate Program in Communications Management, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115-5898.

Organizational Structure of Libraries, rev. ed., by Lowell A. Martin. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. 31 lp. $39.50. ISBN O-8 108-3 1223-6 (Library Administration Series, no. 12).

Lowell Martin is no stranger to library administrators, prac- ticing librarians, and library school students. His excellent body of work on various topics of library administration and his extensive consultative surveys for public libraries have long enriched the literature of librarianship. As an experienced librarian, library school professor, and publishing executive Martin’s unique background and insightful analytical ability make his writings important and well worth reading by inexpe- rienced and experienced library practitioners alike.

Library organization, by Martin’s own admission, is not a topic that preoccupies the daily thinking of most librarians or even library administrators. He points out, for example, that the subject of organization in the classic texts of our field was, until fairly recently, not only largely overlooked but even denigrated, as in the earlier editions of Guy Lyle’s work on college library administration. As one who has studied library orgranization since dissertation research days 25 years ago and struggled with it ever since as an administrator, I am keenly interested in the subject and read the first edition of Martin’s work closely when it was first published 12 years ago. That edition resides on my bookshelf along with this revised edition, and I plan to consult it from time to time because it is replete with valuable informa- tion and observation.

Revised editions often just tack on a new chapter but Martin has incorporated some thought-provoking new material throughout the book. The chapter on “coordination in libraries” shows that so far libraries have not integrated information tech- nology very successfully into their organizational structures “ . . a classic example of limited flexibility in a pre-existing organization.” The resultant danger in Martin’s view is that “... libraries will make half-hearted and piecemeal applications, while commercial information systems come in to fill the void” (p. 269). In discussing staffing issues in the chapter on “library workers,” Martin asks some serious questions about why so few libraries have shown any substantive interest in the subject of Total Quality Management. Over and over, Martin reaches the same, rather unsettling, conclusion: that the time-honored and traditional structure tends to prevail in libraries, and this is a conclusion that raises serious concerns about the immediate future.

I found the chapter on “the librarian’s view of organization” particularly interesting. For a long time librarianship has been hesitant or perhaps has not even recognized the gap between the writings of library management practitioners and the writings of modern management advocates and practitioners. As Martin shows, it is only in the last 20 years or so that some thinkers in our profession have sought to fill the vacuum. The final and new chapter on the “electronic library” is as cogent an analysis of the problems facing libraries in integrating technology and responding effectively to the changing public perception and use of modern information technology as I have read by anyone.

This chapter, although brief, is an excellent example of Martin’s clear and readable but attention-getting prose.

After reading this book, one sentence of Martin’s continued to ring in my mind: “How fares the institution in the age of the Electronic Library” (p. 291)? Lowell Martin hints at a possible third edition some day. I look forward to reading it. Highly rec- ommended for all types of library collections and for the per- sonal bookshelves of any librarian, regardless of level of responsibility or type of library.-Edward R. Johnson, Dean of Libraries, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078-0375.

Perspectives on Quality in Libraries, edited by Thomas W. Shaughnessy. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1996. Librur?, Trends 44(3):459-678, Winter 1996. $18.50.

With a greater demand for accountability in the public sector, quality, evaluation, assessment, and measurement are all now concerns of modem libraries. The literature on quality in librar- ies is very small. This issue of Library Trends looks at quality from an astonishing number of perspectives. The 10 articles cover public libraries, academic libraries, health science librar- ies, and Australian academic libraries. Quality and what that means to libraries has been very hard to define. These articles take very different tactics in developing a view of quality in libraries.

The articles take a wide range on the issues of quality: an article on public services posits that quality is user or cus- tomer-focused and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this approach; an article on quality in academic libraries dis- cusses the serious lack of benchmarks within the library profes- sion; another recommends defining core values as a way to attain excellence of service; and another author discusses qual- ity cataloging by conforming to standards. These articles dis- cuss the difficulties in translating the quality movement from industry into the reality of libraries.

This collection of essays is an excellent contribution to the literature on quality in libraries. The variety and depth of dis- cussion are helpful to librarians as the demand for quality con- tinues to come to libraries from the administration, the public, and accrediting agencies. Highly recommended.-Gail Wood, Director of Libraries, Memorial Library, SUNY College at Co&land, Cortland, NY 13045.

The Profession and Practice of Adult Education: An Introduction, by Sharan B. Merriam and Ralph G. Brockett. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997. 334~. $30.95. ISBN 0-7879-0290-X.

Merriam and Brockett’s purposes are to present an overview of the field and to introduce critical issues concerning the pro- fession of adult education. The intended audience includes graduate students and practitioners interested in becoming bet- ter acquainted with the field. The authors define practitioners in their field generously, including those who profess to be adult educators as well as those who, either formally or informally, participate in the education of adults without identifying them- selves as “adult educators.”

The book is divided into three parts. Part one covers founda- tions of the field (i.e., definitions, philosophical frameworks, and history). Part two describes the organization and delivery of adult education (i.e., programs, adults as learners, and global

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