Dilevko, J., McMillan, B., et al. (2006). Investigating the value of scholarly book reviews for the work of academic reference librarians. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32, 5, p452-466.
In a fit of librarian inspiration I thought to take advantage of the resources available to me as a periodicals library assistant. So I took up a recent issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship and found the above article of interest.
The article is a study of the usefulness to librarians of scholarly book reviews in determining traditional and emerging trends in a particularly field of study. For this study they used the fields of popular music and Southern literature. These were interesting fields to use because popular music, as a scholarly field, is just beginning to develop a concrete canon, whereas, Southern literature is in a current state of flux, with there being a debate about what constitutes Southern literature or whether Southern literature can be defined as its own literature separate from American literature.
The method of the study was to have library school students work in pairs to choose 20 book reviews each from a selection of journals related to their topic. The reviews had to be at least a page in length. After reviewing the reviews, the students worked in pairs to develop a discussion of the major trends in their subject area. These discussions were then sent to experts in the respective fields, who were asked their opinions on the quality and completeness of the discussions.
Most found that the discussions covered the relevant trends in each field well or adequately. A popular music expert found that the discussions could be improved by including the communication/media side of popular music. Southern literature scholars mentioned that because the discipline is in flux, to truly get a picture of the current trends, a study of new materials should also be made, because most books present the ideas that were common 2 to 3 years ago. Finally experts warned that librarians should be cautious when using scholarly book reviews as there is an intermediary in the form of the review author that may create a bias. Primary sources ought to be considered as well.
Overall it was determined that scholarly book reviews can be very helpful to librarians in collection development and in helping to gain a better understanding of a particular field of study.
A very interesting article, also of note is the fact that a study by one of my former teachers, Linda Schamber, was cited in the article. Kind of exciting. Anyway, I hope to post about any articles that I read, concerning the library field, if only so that I can remember what they are and what they said.
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