The authors list the various translation problems that arose through their proofreading efforts,and they sound a note of caution about the pre-eminence of the Anglo-Saxon point of view.The remainder of their paper discusses the difficulty of classifying French law.

Julianne Beall discusses the potential influence of expansions in the history schedules onthe development of Dewey. She also describes the process for suggesting changes to DDC:a national library needs to submit a general proposal to the Dewey Office along withappropriate warrants. The process involves review by librarians with special expertise,review by library associations and posting to the Dewey Web site for worldwide review. Shepraises the Dewey editors for working so actively with the partners in this DDC project.

The final chapter is written by Annie Betheny and focuses on the teaching of DDC in France.The author relates her experiences at the Universite´ de Paris X–Nanterre. An overall frameworkof library science career training in France is included, as well as a history of how the DDCdeveloped in France. The author even includes specific exercises used at the Universite´.

This is not only a fascinating look into the process of a collaborative international project,but it is also an interesting summary of history schedules and French law classification forthe catalogers among us.

Rosann BazirjianPaterno Library, Pennsylvania State University Libraries,

University Park, PA 16802, USAE-mail address:rvb9@psulias.psu.edu

September 10, 2000PII: S1464-9055(00)00198-6

The Economics of Information in the Networked EnvironmentEdited by Meredith A. Butler and Bruce R. Kingma; New York: Haworth Press, 1998.313 pp. $69.95 hardcover ISBN 0789006596 (also published asJournal of LibraryAdministration26, 1/2)

The papers in this collection are intended to answer the question, how can libraries mosteffectively manage the costs of access and delivery of digital information in an era ofdeclining book budgets and increasing serial prices? They also consider issues related to thedevelopment of the knowledge infrastructure and their economic impact on higher education.The authors are experts in electronic publishing, intellectual property rights, resource shar-ing, document delivery, and scholarly communication and include William G. Bowen,President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Hall Varian, Dean of the School ofInformation Management and Systems, UCLA; and Richard C. Rockwell, Executive Direc-tor of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

While the contributors constitute an impressive group of contemporary thinkers on issuesof importance to libraries, the collection has several problems. It consists of papers originallypublished in 1996 by the Association of Research Libraries as conference proceedings. Bythe stated publication date of December 1998, the contents were close to three years old. The

117Book Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 25 (2001) 113–127

rapidly changing nature of publishing in the electronic environment means that cutting-edgethought does not stay on the cutting edge very long. The two keynote addresses are notpresented. Readers are referred to a Web site for the content of David P. Roselle’s presen-tation; that of Mario Morino is represented by a collection of overheads. Other paperscombine text with the overheads used at the conference. This volume also suffers from itsattempt to replicate the conference environment and the liveliness of dialogue. Transcribedquestions and answers and moderators’ and commentators’ remarks add little to the sub-stance of these proceedings.

The most successful contributions in this collection can stand on their own. Bowen, in“JSTOR and the Economics of Scholarly Communication,” provides an overview and historyof the JSTOR project. Rockwell provides a similar piece on the Inter-University Consortiumfor Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Both are successful approaches to the creation anddistribution of electronic resources and provide useful case studies. Bruce Kingma examinesthe economics of access versus ownership in a study of the costs and benefits of access toscholarly articles via ILL and journal subscriptions. This project was described in more detailin a 1996 publication.

The Economics of Information in the Networked Environmenthas a lofty title andimportant contributors, but fails to deliver the content one expects. Its value is as a summaryof the conference and the topics that compelled the attention of leading thinkers andinstitutions in the recent past. Libraries with large library and information science collectionsmay wish to acquire this volume as part of the historical record. It serves little other purpose.

Peggy JohnsonAssistant University Librarian

University of Minnesota Libraries,499 Wilson Library, 309 19th Avenue South,

Minneapolis, MN 55455, USAE-mail address:m-john@tc.umn.edu

September 10, 2000PII: S1464-9055(00)00202-5

Electronic Reserves Operations in ARL LibrariesCindy Kristof; SPEC Kits, 245. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries,Office of Leadership and Management Services, 1999. 89 pp. $40.00 (US $25.00 ARLmembers) softcover ISSN 01603582

This SPEC Kit reports the findings of a survey done in the third quarter of 1998 by CindyKristoff, Document Delivery Librarian at Kent State University Libraries. Kristoff’s statedgoal was to document the state-of-the-art for electronic reserves two years after ARL’s 1996Transforming Librariesreport was published. That this was a period meriting study is clearlyshown in the accompanying graphs, as the report documents a surge in interest and activityin 1997, followed by a reassessment period as some libraries went back to the drawing boards

118 Book Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 25 (2001) 113–127