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College and Research Libraries
September 2002, Vol. 63, No. 5

Book Review

The Role and Impact of the Internet on Library and Information Services. Ed. Lewis-Guodo Liu. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Pr. (Contributions in Librarianship and Information Science, no. 96), 2001. 334p. $64.95, alk. paper (ISBN 0313309205). LC 2001-23873.

Current library science literature contains an abundance of articles about the impact of the Internet on all types of libraries. The articles often focus on the Internet’s impact in a specific area of library science, such as archives. The Role and Impact of the Internet on Library and Information Services, however, brings together a selection of articles about each major library function, with a sampling of essays on more specific issues within the major functional areas. Although some of the essays mention public and special libraries, most of the book is concerned with academic libraries.

This book contains thirteen essays divided into four sections. The first section contains one essay, a brief history of the Internet. The second section includes six essays on the broader topics of administration, collection management, cataloging, interlibrary loan and document delivery, reference, and bibliographic instruction. The third section includes essays on narrower topics: business librarianship, government information services, science librarianship, academic media centers, and archives. And the fourth section contains one essay on the importance of Internet training in libraries. Although it is not titled “Conclusion,” it brings the various threads of the volume together because training staff and patrons how to use the Internet and various online databases is key to all of the areas discussed in the book. As author D. Scott Brandt states, “It almost goes without saying that if someone is talking about computer literacy, he or she is also talking about Internet literacy.”

Lewis-Guodo Liu, the book’s editor and author of the business librarianship essay, is associate professor at the Newman Library of Baruch College of the City University of New York. He teaches credit courses in business information research, provides reference service, and is responsible for collection development in finance. Liu has authored several previous books on libraries and the Internet.

An exceptional feature of the book is that almost all of the contributors are both researchers and practitioners. The chapter on collection management, for example, is written by Dr. Thomas E. Nisonger, currently associate professor at Indiana University’s School of Library and Information Science, but formerly coordinator of collection development for two different academic libraries. Other important features of the book include extensive author and subject indexes and a biographical section about each contributor. Each essay concludes with a substantial list of references.

Two related issues are continuously discussed throughout the book: “disintermediation” and access versus ownership. In relation to online access, “disintermediation” refers to the decrease in opportunities for library professionals to help researchers in selecting and evaluating information. Granted, intermediation opportunities are routinely missed, but with the Internet, information is available remotely and disintermediation is more common. Technology, such as chat reference, helps to alleviate this concern. “Access versus ownership” is discussed as it relates to each functional area of the library: reference, cataloging, interlibrary loan, and so on.

This book will be most useful to researchers because of its theoretical nature and extensive bibliographies. Books such as this one that give an overview of the Internet’s impact on libraries and include essays written by researchers, as well as practitioners, are especially important for all library and information science collections. Practitioners, however, might wish for more of a how-to manual for managing the Internet’s impact on library services.—Margie Ruppel, Southern Illinois University.