Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews

Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman

Column Editor’s Note: So … it’s the holidays and the new year. We know that because the students are finishing up exams, final projects and the campus is getting quieter than normal. I hope that everyone was successful this fall in providing services to your students, faculty, staff, community and other users, be they in person, remote or hybrid (where just about everything is). I also hope that through this all, you are able to balance out the goods and bads that life is throwing at all of us right now. It is difficult to see that when you are in the midst of a tricky time, but hopefully things will get better sooner rather than later.

If that sounds like a previous column, it is because of the strange “Groundhog Day” vibe that we seem to have on campuses. So if we really just focus on what we are here to do, you will have an opportunity to consider some new works on the library and information sciences field as well as new works for library reference. These reviews are ones you are going to want to read if you are building a library, trying to understand copyright or trying to develop an escape room (no that is not for staff meetings — but it is tempting). The reference work included here explores conspiracies — as if we have not had enough of those these past two years.

Reviewing in this issue are: Joshua Hutchinson (University of Southern California), Jennifer Matthews (Rowan University), Rachelle McLain (Montana State University), Mary Catherine Moeller (University of Michigan), John Novak (Fairfield University), Jessica Shuck (Cornerstone University), and Sarah Thorngate (North Park University, Chicago). Thank you everyone for being great partners in this endeavor.

If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here — https://sites.google.com/view/ squirrelman/atg-readers-roundup.

Happy reading and be nutty! — CS

Anderson, Cordelia. Library Marketing and Communications: strategies to increase relevance and results. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020. 9780838947999, 157 pages. $54.99 reviewed by rachelle McLain (Collection Development Librarian, Montana state University Library, Montana state University, Bozeman) <rachelle.mclain@montana.edu>

Inspired by a keynote address she gave at the 2018 Library Marketing and Communications Conference, Cordelia Anderson wrote an outstanding book about how to successfully and strategically launch marketing and communication plans from within libraries. Anderson is a consultant who provides marketing and communications services to community-serving organizations. She begins the book with a detailed, yet easy to understand, description of public relations, marketing, and promotion and how these three terms are very different from each other. Beyond just defining what the terms mean, the author gives very clear examples from within actual libraries that illustrate when the term is used appropriately.

Anderson also connects this effort to the broader library mission and direction. I don’t think I can capture how Anderson emphasized this enough except using her own words: a library needs a strategic plan. A library needs to do their research. A library needs a “strategic mindset.” Marketing and communications should ideally be the focus of a staff member(s) work, not necessarily assigned as an afterthought or tacked on to an employee’s list of duties.

I am not proposing that you only read Chapter four, but Anderson opens the chapter by stating, “If you only read one chapter in this book, let it be this one.” She is not wrong. Chapter four devotes itself to defining and explaining the “library marketing funnel.” Anderson writes that the marketing funnel concept was created in 1898 and describes the four stages of a customer’s relationship with an organization. The marketing funnel has evolved over the years, and additional stages have been added, bringing the number of stages up to nine. Anderson gently shares with her readers that libraries have not applied the “marketing funnel” to their work with their customers and that, in fact, libraries have built up roadblocks to using libraries. Not to worry, Anderson follows up Chapter four with a chapter on how to fix this problem. Again, she has plenty of real life examples and practical suggestions to illustrate how this can be done.

Writing a book about marketing and communications would not be complete without a chapter on branding. Chapter six not only wraps itself up by detailing ways to create a brand, it begins by sharing the history of branding and libraries. Anderson shares stationary and bookplates from a former library she worked at, illustrating in this one instance how branding and the library changes over a period of time.

The second half of the book focuses on the importance of libraries and the partnerships they can create; the need for advocacy planning; and the critical importance of reputation management and crisis communications. All three of these chapters emphasize the importance of relationships as they relate to these topics. Anderson has examples from her work in libraries over the years that show how the relationships libraries make and build are critical to their success. The final chapter, titiled Staffing and Organizational Structure, takes all of the information presented in the preceding chapters and does a great job of outlining how libraries can get all of it done. Anderson begins the chapter by sharing how to hire professionals from the get go; how to align their work with the library’s priorities; the importance of placing marketing and communications work within a leadership role and then staffing and managing the roles within that department; creating a culture that advocates for diversity and inclusion; and lastly, the importance of library leadership embracing and investing in their marketing and communications.

I want to re-read this book already. The real life stories shared by Anderson throughout the book as she illustrated the successful and sometimes not so successful ways that libraries

market themselves are engaging and inspiring. I have long felt that libraries, generally, struggle with being able to tell their stories (their events, their struggles, their wins) consistently and effectively. This book will inspire you to look at the marketing and communications strategies within your own library, or, if you don’t have one, create one!

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Chase, Darren, and Dana haugh, eds. Open Praxis, Open Access: Digital scholarship in Action. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020. 9780838918678, 275 pages. reviewed by John novak (Associate Dean for Technical services and Budget, Fairfield University) <jnovak@fairfield.edu>, OrCiD iD: 0000-0003-4761-5400

As the open access movement matures, the benefits of open access are a universally accepted truth — at least among librarians. As anyone who promotes open access in a higher education setting can attest, there is a wide gulf between theory and practice. The subtitle of this book of collected essays accurately describes the purpose of this book. Nearly each book chapter deals with attempts to accelerate the adoption of open access, amidst setbacks and obstacles, among their respective library community. The book is a collection of sixteen chapters divided into five sections: overview of open praxis, open access publishing, repositories, open educational resources (OERs), and open data. The opening chapter sets the table by providing an overview of openness, with the following three chapters focusing on global open access with chapters on Canada, Asia and a chapter on open access and intersectionality.

The next four parts contain chapters in which open access is put into practice. Many chapters can be read as case studies

guide to the ATg reviewer ratings

The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing means and thinks it will help to classify the importance of these books. • I need this book on my nightstand. (This book is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when I am in bed.) • I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.) • I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.) • I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.) • I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.) that detail the opportunities and challenges of implementing a specific aspect of open access in the academy. For example, Paul Royster pens a chapter about the history of the institutional repository at the University of Nebraska while Mary Jo Orzech and Kim L. Myers detail their work in the chapter entitled “Adopting an Open Access Policy at a Four-Year Comprehensive College.” Other chapters deal with implementing OERs within a consortia, cataloging protected research data in order to improve discoverability, and working with 3D repositories. Early in his chapter, Royster informs the reader that the path University of Nebraska took to establish its IR should be read as “descriptive, not prescriptive.” I believe that many of the chapters in this collection can be read in the same way. With chapters from libraries of different sizes serving a university, college or the public, a reader is best advised to take strategies that would work at their own institution instead of interpreting each chapter as a roadmap to implementing open access.

The breadth and variety of chapters allow those who have worked primarily in scholarly communications to encounter a new aspect of open access. Essays on a pilot data catalog to improve the discoverability of restricted data and 3D open repositories fell into this category for me. Another strong chapter took an argumentative stand. Heidi Zuniga and Lilan Hoffecker, in their chapter entitled “Challenging Library Support of Article Processing Charges,” discuss their experience of the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Library’s article processing charge (APC) program and the criteria used to evaluate this program. In their final analysis, they stopped their APC program for it was not sustainable and it did not effectively support their open access mission.

This book is recommended, in particular, for the open access advocate and scholarly communication expert to read. The book lacks an introduction and I believe that the reader would benefit from hearing about the intellectual choices the editors made, such as article topics they excluded from their book, how each chapter relates to one another, or how this book adds to the robust literature that already exists open access. Given that, this book is a strong collection of institutions attempting to expand open access for their community.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Cornish, graham P. Copyright: interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and information services. rev. 6th Edition. London: Facet Publishing, 2019. 9781783304233, $150.57 reviewed by Jennifer Matthews (Collection strategy Librarian, rowan University) <matthewsj@rowan.edu>

In Copyright: Interpreting the Law for Libraries, Archives and Information Services, Graham P. Cornish aspires to explain United Kingdom (UK) copyright law as it pertains to galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM). As written, Cornish’s work is meant as a desktop reference work to aid those working directly with users and should be useful to those “in all types of library and information service, whether public, academic, government or private” (p. ix).

This book was compiled prior to the completion of the exit negotiations for the UK leaving the European Union (e.g., Brexit) and, therefore, the author has included a disclaimer at the beginning of the work that this could affect some of the guidance in terms of geographical interpretation. Cornish advises users

to check the Statutory Instrument prepared by the UK government which goes into effect on the day Brexit takes effect (p. x).

As with many books on copyright, there is a list of abbreviations in the front for common reference throughout, a list of useful address and contacts in the back, and an appendix of suggested declaration forms. The book itself is divided up into twelve sections that each take on the standard format of definition, authorship, ownership, duration of copyright, exceptions, and then other variances such as educational copying and library copying as applicable under UK law. The very first section of the work helps to define copyright and the law, Section Two defines what is covered, and Section Three focuses on the rights and limitations one is entitled to under copyright law in the UK. For those working in GLAM institutions under UK copyright law, this is a relatively easy work to manage and find information. Sections are clear as to what aspect of the law they refer (databases versus literary works versus sound recordings) and when aspects are not clear, Cornish indicates such in the entry. For instance, in Section Four, Literary, Dramatic and Musical Works, heading Material open to public inspection entry 4.317, “Does this also apply to statutory registers such as registers of voters?” states:

Apparently not, because no mention is made of statutory registers in the relevant section of the Act. However, the SI refers specifically to statutory registers in this section, so it is unclear just what is allowed. (pp. 78-79)

Once library staff become comfortable with the format of the book, it should be easy to find what one is looking for under each copyright section. The lists of contacts in the back should also prove useful for those that may not have as much experience in certain areas of copyright.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere

in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Kroski, Ellyssa. Escape rooms and Other immersive Experiences in the Library. American Library Association, 2019. 9780838917671, 188 pages, $68.00. reviewed by Jessica shuck (eresources Librarian, Cornerstone University) <Jessica.shuck@cornerstone.edu>

Escape Rooms as attractions have been increasing in popularity since the first recorded one in Japan in 2007 (Kroski 5). With influences of live action role play games, puzzles, and video games, escape rooms are immersive experiences that require players to solve problems in order to escape a room or unlock something in the allotted time. They can range in number of players, level of difficulty, and many other requirements. Libraries have joined amusement firms in escape rooms as a way to engage patrons. They’ve been used as tools for outreach, information literacy, instruction, training, and curriculum support. Escape Rooms and Other Immersive Experiences in the Library by Ellyssa Kroski describes the history of escape rooms, ways in which they have been and can be used in the library, and specific examples from real libraries.

Kroski continues with more practical applications in Part II of the book. Here, the author details eleven different escape room projects and how to design and implement them. Each chapter in this section describes a different type (such as pop-ups, digital breakouts, and staff-training, etc…). She walks readers through many of the things that should be considered, whether creating an event from scratch or using a pre-designed option. She even provides specific websites and products that could be used in the process.

The author also addresses ideas for marketing the events. Kroski gives recommendations for the pre-game preparation and experience, as well as what items to have on hand for troubleshooting during the game. Each chapter is filled with detailed and very practical advice which is guaranteed to help readers as they plan their own immersive experiences. The book finishes with a case study, start-to-finish model, templates for creating your own experience, and a long list of helpful resources. Libraries have such a wide range of resources available, so it seems fitting that escape rooms can be customized according to the library. The author does a great job of providing multiple options to fit a variety of scenarios. As a librarian working with limited time and staff, I appreciate that she devoted an entire chapter (Chapter 11) to escape room board games. She provided names, reviews and where to purchase, as well as information on how to collect and maintain board games in the library.

Ellyssa Kroski has a lot of experience when it comes to library outreach. She is the Director of Information Technology and Marketing at the New York Law Institute, an adjunct faculty member at Drexel and San Jose State Universities, a librarian, and an author of over 60 library related titles. She has received numerous awards, including the 2020 Joseph L. Andrews Legal Literature Award from the American Association of Law Libraries and the 2017 Library Hi Tech Award from the American Library Association. Kroski’s interest in cosplay and gaming makes her a great resource in this area. She has posted more information about escape rooms as well as links to talks and webinars at https://ekroski.wixsite.com/webinars. While Escape Rooms may not be necessary for every library to own, it is a helpful resource for anyone hoping to create an immersive experience in their library.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere

in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

McLeish, simon (ed.). resource Discovery for the Twenty-First Century Library: Case studies and perspectives on the role of iT in user engagement and empowerment. London (UK): Facet Publishing, 2020. 9781783301386, 203 pages. £64.95 / $84.00. reviewed by Joshua hutchinson (head, Acquisitions and Cataloging, University of southern California Libraries) <joshuah8@usc.edu>

Resource discovery has experienced significant changes over the past few decades; from the move away from the OPAC, which was a digital reflection of the card catalog, to more modern discovery layers, patrons and librarians have experienced dramatic change in the way they search for and discover library materials. This collection of essays contains 12 chapters that examine the state of resource discovery in libraries. Without exception, the contributions are excellent, and the book as a whole feels like a master class in the issues that surround resource discovery.

With chapters that include case studies as well as theoretical treatments, this book provides a good introductory treatment of issues surrounding resource discovery including (but not limited to) searching using discovery layers; potential strategies

for integrating resource discovery across formats and discovery systems; research into resource discovery needs; and considerations about the semantic web and resource discovery. Lorcan Dempsey (Chief Strategist at OCLC) wrote the illuminating foreword which breaks out some of the ways in which resource discovery has recently changed, including redefining the “local collection,” discovering full library resources (beyond what’s in the library catalog), and making library search tools available to those outside of the institution. Simon McLeish, who edited the volume, wrote or contributed to four of the chapters, and also wrote the editorial afterward. McLeish is Resource Discovery Architect for the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford. While the contributors are predominantly from the UK — including a number of contributions from McLeish’s home institution — there are also contributors from the National Library of Singapore, the University of Göttingen and the University of California, among others.

The chapter by Chris Awre and Richard Green entitled “Open source discovery using Blacklight at the University of Hull” is a fantastic overview of the development of the Blacklight discovery tool, including a brief history of its development at the University of Virginia, as well as its adoption at the University of Hull as an interface for that institution’s digital repository, library catalog and archives catalog. The inclusion of chapters such as this, which read almost like how-to guides for creative and efficient use of an open source discovery tool. The chapter by Masha Garibyan and Simon McLeish entitled “Exposing collections and resources effectively” is, much like the rest of the book, well formulated and structured. It includes a brief potted history of the search engine, and follows that up with considerations to keep in mind when planning to improve exposure. The chapter devotes significant space to the importance of metadata, without which accurate and optimized resource discovery is impossible, and finally includes considerations for using engagement and social media to expose collections — including practical examples from libraries in the UK and U.S.

This is an important work, and should be consulted by anyone involved in configuring library discovery tools. McLeish has curated an excellent collection of chapters that together create a useful work for anyone working with library resource discovery.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Murphy, Maggie with Adrienne Button. Teaching First-Year College students: A Practical guide for Librarians. Lanham, MD: rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 9781538116982, 187 pages. reviewed by sarah Thorngate (Associate Professor of information Literacy, Brandel Library, north Park University, Chicago) <scthorngate@northpark.edu>

The first year of college is a critical transition point for undergraduates, requiring them to adjust academically, culturally, and socially to a new educational community. Navigating this transition successfully is key to individuals’ life chances, as most students who drop out of college do so in their first year. In response, colleges have developed a constellation of programs and support services aimed at retaining first-year students.

In Teaching First-Year College Students, Maggie Murphy and contributing author Adrienne Button situate first-year library instruction within these broader efforts to support first-year students. “The goal of this book,” they write, “is to help librarians connect research and theory about first-year students with practical approaches to designing, teaching, and assessing firstyear library instruction.” (5) Murphy, first-year instruction and humanities librarian at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Button, library instruction coordinator at Georgia Gwinnett College, met as students in Kennesaw State University’s master’s program in first-year studies. They bring knowledge of the research on first-year students and a wealth of experience in first-year library instruction to this topic. The book consists of two main parts. The first three chapters contextualize first-year library instruction within the empirical data, theories, and practices connected to first-year experience initiatives. The remainder of the book lays out the fundamentals of teaching and learning for academic librarians, with examples and sample lesson plans addressing typical first-year library instruction scenarios.

This second part is where the book truly shines. Murphy provides a first-rate introduction to teaching as a librarian, somehow managing to be both comprehensive and concise. It pulls together the smorgasbord of skills and practices that go into library instruction: faculty outreach, lesson planning, graphic design, assessment, online learning, instructional design, and advocacy. For each topic, she offers a succinct overview of current theory and practice, detailed examples of ways one might apply this knowledge, and a well-curated list of additional resources. While very little of this information was new to me as an experienced instruction librarian, that points to a key strength of this book — the various bits of knowledge that I’ve gleaned over the years from workshops, listservs, books, and more trial and error than I care to admit are packaged into a single well-researched and highly readable volume. I would have benefited greatly from this book earlier in my career and will likely use it as a roadmap for training new instruction librarians in the future.

As much as I admire this book as an introduction to library instruction, I do find it a bit odd because that was not what the title or introduction led me to expect. The bulk of the book is less about teaching first-year students and more about being an effective instruction librarian in general, with examples applicable to topics one might cover in first-year courses. The detailed overview of best practices for teaching comes at the expense of deeper elaboration of how first-year students’ transition into college impacts library instruction. In particular, I would have liked to see more attention to the changing demographics of college students in terms of race, ethnicity, nativity, class, age, and gender. Murphy stresses the important point that first-year students are not a “monolith” and urges librarians to take stock of their own student bodies. Fair enough, but a survey of research on how members of these various groups tend to experience the transition to college would have been a worthwhile addition to this book, and a helpful starting point for librarians attempting to learn more about their own student bodies.

That said, the book provides a persuasive, well-documented argument for a specialized approach to teaching first-year students alongside a thorough introduction to the work of teaching librarians more broadly. Early-career librarians will find an excellent primer on the craft of instruction librarianship. Mid-career librarians will find creative lesson plans and ideas for active learning to refresh their teaching practice.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Plath, James. Critical insights: Conspiracies. grey house Publishing, 2020. 9781642653731, 297 pages. $105.00 reviewed by Mary Catherine Moeller (Assistant Librarian, Kresge Library services, ross school of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) <mcmoelle@umich.edu>

Conspiracies have been a topic of interest to our society for nearly as long as we have existed. Truth-seeking is in our nature as humans and so it is only natural that we sometimes suspect scheming. When one thinks of conspiracy theories it is easy to picture tin foil hats and wild leaps of logic, but this book focuses instead on logical questioning of the historical, political and literary. It encourages readers to see conspiracy theories not only as a literary theme but also as a critical thinking tool.

Editor James Plath is the R. Forrest Colwell endowed chair and professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University where he teaches American literature, journalism, film and creative writing. Every chapter in Critical Insights: Conspiracies is an essay written by a different author, all centering around conspiracies present in novels, films, plays and graphic novels. The pieces each author writes about are either ones that are commonly used in high school AP classes or found on syllabi for undergraduate coursework. Each author’s dissection of their instance of conspiracy is unique and opens the readers eyes to the many ways in which conspiracy is and has been present in written media.

The “Critical Contexts” section consists of four chapters that introduce readers to a few of the different bases upon which conspiracy theories might build. It covers religion, politics, race and economics. This section provides a warm up for “Critical Readings” which dives into 10 essays based on incredibly varied texts from Shakespeare to Nineteen Eighty-Four to The Shining. It is a truly varied and well-rounded sample of scholarly analysis of conspiracy. The most thought provoking chapter was the one written by M. Katherine Grimes that centered around contemporary young adult fiction. She draws on commonalities in young adult literature and finds that conspiracy is inspirational in these texts. For young people in these books, they are “inspired to conspire” as a way of fighting against injustices perpetrated by adults in power. She makes connections between this theme and current events; particularly the involvement of young adults’ in various social justice causes. Her chapter sees conspiracy not as an overt theme but rather as an undercurrent that promotes critical thinking in young people.

Critical Insights: Conspiracies would serve as an excellent tool for English teachers at the high school and undergraduate level. It is thought-provoking and features essays that would be for great supplementary materials to compliment the original works that students might study. Overall, I would want to have this book around to reference if ever I needed to further explore any of the works featured in it.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

schlipf, Fred. Constructing Library Buildings That Work. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2020. 9780838947586, $49.99. reviewed by Jennifer Matthews (Collection strategy Librarian, rowan University) <matthewsj@rowan.edu>

Over the course of any librarian’s career, one is bound to experience the renovation or construction of a library. (Editor’s Note: For your sake, let’s hope it is not a repurposing). The renovation of a space leads to a rebirth of tired spaces while the creation of a brand-new library building can reinvigorate an entire community around the fresh structure and programming created to launch the opening. In Fred Schilpf’s Constructing Library Buildings That Work, the reader is methodically taken through the various steps of any library renovation or building project from considering the shape of the building, hiring architectural firms, and funding, to the materials used, staff spaces, and even a final word about the “good and bad ideas of library architecture” (p. 65).

Schilpf’s work is based on his earlier work with John A. Moorman, The Practical Handbook of Library Architecture: Creating Building Spaces That Work (2018) and is not meant to be read from cover to cover. Rather, the user is meant to select sections as necessary to assist with the overall experience of renovating library spaces. This means that Schilpf covers such projects such as the selection of a possible site for building to the completion of the project. For experienced librarians on their third or fourth renovation project, this work would be a handy item to share with members of the renovation planning committee who may not have as much experience in this area or need to become familiar with why libraries are structured with cantilever shelving and sound absorption properties. Schilpf advocates heavily for the role of librarians throughout the book, and he particularly advocates for building programmers with librarian backgrounds on these projects. He provides directions on how to find these building programmers for your projects as well as how to best use these individuals to the benefit of your project. The book itself is divided into two sections with the first half covering the essentials of library construction such as the who, what, how, and why while the second half covers how to construct a successful building. Of note is the coverage of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance aspects in library buildings, and general security issues. As Schilpf describes, his chapters are structured like outlines with bullet points rather than long paragraphs to aid readers in discovering information (p. xi).

Schilpf also does not fail to disparage to continuous creation of “spectacularly foolish library building designs” that he wishes would fade away (p. xi). Perhaps with this work, and the sharing of its contents with library construction committees, fewer of these buildings can be created such as libraries where portions of the collection can only be reached by stairs, steel grating floors, and inadequate elevators even in light of ADA compliance.

Constructing Library Buildings That Work contains many facets that should inform both the veteran library renovation committee member as well as the novice member. Librarians in both public libraries and academic libraries will find information that can inform their pursuit of a more pleasing library space for themselves and their patrons.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere

in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)