The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts. Eds. Ken Haycock and Brooke E. Sheldon. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2008. 296p. alk. paper, $50 (ISBN 9781591585473). LC 2008-010351

The Portable MLIS was compiled to fill what editors, LIS educators Haycock and Sheldon, have identified as a gap in the literature of foundational librarianship. The primary goal of this work is to provide a single-volume overview of foundation, practice, and future of librarianship. This collection of 18 essays written by 11 LIS faculty, 7 Academic Library administrators, and a single Public Library administrator, however, does not fulfill this purpose. What the reader does find is a compilation of highly respectable, valuable, but incomplete perspectives and opinions that, while of value to any information professional, also leave unrepresented the other disciplines, such as management and computer science, that contribute substantially to the solution of many contemporary information management challenges.

The Portable MLIS is organized as a series of three thematic "parts," the first of which, "Foundations, Values and Context," is composed of five chapters. The first of these, by Richard E. Rubin, takes the reader through various historical perspectives on the importance of the library to society. Disappointingly for a chapter positioned to set the tone for the book, a key opportunity is missed to generate much appreciation for current and future Web-based information management challenges. The increase of user reliance on the Web for information is described unenthusiastically, for example, as among the "clouds on the [profession’s] horizon." Subsequent chapters in the first section do better to rouse excitement for new professional possibilities. Michael Gorman’s offering on professional ethics and values in a changing world is certainly worthwhile, informed by his long engagement with the philosophy of librarianship, but its very particular political formulation becomes repetitive and strikes an occasional demagogic chord. Students will be challenged by Kathleen de la Pena McCook and Katharine Phenix’s chapter 3, which traces a progression of the shift from librarianship’s connection to democracy to a newer bond with human rights activism. The conclusions in this chapter are energizing though vague, but the bibliography concluding this essay point to excellent additional resources on this subject. Donald O. Case’s chapter, "Information Seeking," is nuanced and appreciative of the complexities of the digital environment. And Laura Kane’s chapter on "Careers and Environments" is an upbeat excursion through many traditional and emerging streams of librarianship. On the whole, Part One, while interesting and varied in scope, is uneven in depth and falls short of providing the LIS student with the full outline of the profession’s new foundational challenges.

The chapters that comprise "Part II: Functions and Competencies" provide the most substantive content in the book. The first two of these chapters, by Brooke Sheldon and Barbara Moran respectively, offer well-constructed approaches to library leadership skills. Moran’s brief section on the acquisition of management proficiencies to navigate the "permanent white water" of library management is among the more valuable prescriptions in the text. Chapter 8 by Christie Koontz and chapter 9 by G. Edward Evans deal ably with all aspects of library marketing and creating service collections and offer some very good advice for both new and seasoned practitioners about how to build partnerships and sustain relationships. Judith Weedman, David A. Tyckoson, Linda Main, and Mary K. Chelton, authors respectively of Chapters 11–15, share excellent philosophical perspectives on information retrieval, reference service, the notion of "librarian as Googler," and reader advisory. As a public service professional, this reviewer found these chapters valuable but, at the same time, wished that the authors had made use of graphics such as interface design templates, screenshots, and interview samples to facilitate understanding of the many intangible aspects of library service theory. In fact, the unbroken use of straight text throughout the entire volume undermines the wide variety of topics within. For example, in the following pages, even the novice might wonder why there would be no illustrations of a data sample or a focus group transcript within the chapter on research. And why, one may ask, are there no survey samples or assessment prototypes illustrating the otherwise valuable chapter on learning and using evaluation?

The two chapters that comprise the final "Part III: Moving Beyond the Boundaries" fail even to approach some of the boundaries encountered in the routine work of this midcareer reviewer. In fact, very little in these two chapters challenge the perceived boundaries of anyone who reads the daily news. While Barbara J. Ford’s "LIS Professionals in a Global Society" is a good summation of where the profession is today vis a vis global outreach, the fact remains that librarians have been regular participants—if not leaders—in such activity for well over a decade. In fact, global outreach is a mainstream enterprise in most academic libraries. Ken Haycock’s "Issues and Trends" similarly treads very well-worn territory. The issues of "library as business" and friction "between and among educators of librarians and members of the profession," for example, while well articulated in this volume, were familiar LIS discussion points by the late 1980s. No distinctly 21st-century issue or trend is to be found in either chapter. Perhaps in a later edition of this book, some discussion of the more urgent challenge to move beyond internal boundaries within library specializations may be included. The 21st-century library, particularly the academic library, bumps up against legacy departmental boundaries to engage in special project management, digital preservation, cyber infrastructure, and other activities. Some perspective from the experts as how such internal boundaries may be moved with less awkwardness would, in this reviewer’s opinion, be a more contemporary and valuable topic for this section.

Minor difficulties readers will encounter include the sharp variety of perspective and tone throughout this book. While offering a diversity of professional perspectives, the Portable MLIS occasionally produces a jarring reader experience. For example, the lighthearted brio evident in Laura Kane’s chapter, sustained by recurring exclamation points and peppy exhortations, is at odds with some of Ken Haycock’s much more somber admonitions about professional trends. Another distraction for both novice and veteran readers is that surely the authors are aware that there is much excellent, even superior literature and clarifying research on the topics covered in their essays (particularly in Part I): the extreme brevity of the reading lists at the end of each chapter is therefore puzzling. The layout is inappropriate for pedagogical purposes and the contributors’ neglect to place their offerings within a reasonably contemporary universe of LIS scholarship is not helpful to readers.

To entitle a volume published in 2008 with such shortcomings "The Portable MLIS" is an irritant that increases with reflection: while this book is a useful collection of writings by a selection of distinguished members of the library profession, some of the volume’s contributions could easily have been written several years ago. The Portable MLIS does not provide a single volume overview of foundation, practice, and future of 21st-century librarianship. It must be supplemented by a great deal more contemporary theory as well as current testimony to fulfill this promise.—Jane Duffy, Dalhousie University.