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Libraries & Culture 37.3 (2002) 299-300



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Book Review

On Account of Sex:
An Annotated Bibliography on the Status of Women in Librarianship, 1993-1997


On Account of Sex: An Annotated Bibliography on the Status of Women in Librarianship, 1993-1997. Edited by Betsy Kruger and Catherine A. Larson. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2000. xviii, 304 pp. $65.00. ISBN 0-8108-3725-0.

Continuing a tradition that began more than two decades ago with the publication of The Role of Women in Librarianship: 1876-1976 (Oryx, 1979), editors Betsy Kruger of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Catherine A. Larson of the University of Arizona have, however, brought a fresh perspective to the task. While the goal of making readily accessible in one place the bibliographic output on women in the library profession remains the same, the current editors offer a greater inclusiveness and a modernized organization. The latter permits the user a much clearer idea of the nature and extent of this literature and the political issues it reflects. In addition, a comparative view of the topics and their national origins is facilitated. The introduction by Roma Harris of the University of Western Ontario emphasizes the social context of gender stratification within the profession and the growing role of information technology in that stratification.

For the first time in the history of this quinquennial series, material in a non-Western language is listed, and the list of contributors, a kind of editorial board, now includes a non-American. Relevant works from other disciplines like Darlene Clark Hine's Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Carlson, 1993) and Marie Alison Parker's Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933 (University of Illinois Press, 1997) are included. Relevant websites, not available to previous editors, are listed. It is to be hoped that future years will bring, perhaps through collaboration with women's groups within national library organizations and within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), an even greater inclusiveness.

Topical organization now replaces chronological organization. The chronological, although of some value in the basic volume, which covered a century by permitting a view of a growing literature, has been a hindrance in subsequent volumes, which cover a half-decade only. The current volume, in an arrangement familiar in subject bibliographies, offers fourteen chapters on relevant topics with individual items arranged alphabetically by author. Chapters include "Biography and Autobiography," "Education, Leadership, and Management," "Library Associations," "Library History," and "Salary and Pay Equity." As with all such schemes, as the editors readily admit, ambiguities and actual placement errors will appear. A geographic index now appears, supplementing the author and subject indexes.

The longest chapter is that devoted to history, running 60 pages and describing 133 items. The foreign language with the most entries in this chapter is German, with twenty-one, one being of Swiss origin. Although Dutch and Japanese are represented, there is nothing in French. In contrast, "Information Technology," seen by Harris (and this author) as crucial to the status of women in librarianship, [End Page 299] is a relatively brief chapter, with twenty-four items, all in English, though not all American in origin. None of this is a surprise, but it is interesting to see how the arrangement supports analysis, and users will be readily able to perform their own. Information about contributors and the geographic index offer possibilities for further analysis either in combination with topics or independently.

It is not surprising that in a work of this scope an occasional relevant title is omitted, and works from outside the library and information science field are especially vulnerable to being overlooked. One notable omission is Abigail Van Slyck's Free to All: Carnegie Libraries & American Culture, 1890-1920 (University of Chicago Press, 1995). This work of architectural history reveals much about women and gender relations in the library world, although its subject headings, as is so often the case with works on these topics, do not show this.

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