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BOOK REVIEW, SPRING SEMESTER 2003
Philip Doty and R. E. Wyllys
Assignment Title: Scholarly Book Review
Participation:
Part 1, review in class: Group
Part 2, scholarly essay: Individual.
Format:
Part 1, presentation consisting of oral comments from each group member,
with support by PowerPoint slides as group determines appropriate
Part 2, scholarly essay: Formal seven- to nine-page essay in APA final
manuscript format.
Submission Method:
Part 1, class time will be scheduled for presentations
Part 2, scholarly essay: Email to the course emailbox with the essay
attached as a Microsoft Word document.
Maximum points: 20 (class-presentation/participation 8 and
essay 12).
Introduction: Throughout their working careers, library and
information practitioners must critically consider the information
they read within the context of their academic and life experiences.
This assignment helps you prepare for such critical evaluation by
choosing one of the books below, reading it closely, thinking about
it, reporting on it to others, and writing an integrative critical
review of it.
Goals: The goals of this assignment are for you:
- To understand a selected scholarly view of the impact of information
technologies on the information professions and on important issues
in library and information science.
- To gain experience in writing critical essays of other scholars'
work and comparing it with the knowledge you have gained within
and outside this course. To meet this goal, simple summaries are
not sufficient to meet the requirements of this assignment. Your
review must be analytic, evaluative, and, to the extent appropriate,
comparative.
- To gain experience in making a group presentation before an audience.
Tasks: For this assignment:
- Early in the course, you are to choose one of the books from the
following list, and send a notice of your choice by email to the
class TA. A maximum
of five students may choose any one book. Please see the table
below for the availability of books. (Note: For more information
about these books than can be provided here, we recommend your
going to Amazon.com and checking
the information available there about each book.)
|
Author
|
Title
|
Total
|
Chosen
|
Still available
|
| Borgman, Christine L. |
From Gutenberg to the Global Information
Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World
(2000, 2003) |
5
|
5
|
0
|
| Brook, James, and Boal, Iain A. (eds.) |
Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and
Politics of Information (1995) |
5
|
5
|
0
|
| Brown, John S., and Duguid, Paul |
The Social Life of Information (2000) |
6
|
6
|
0
|
| Kenney, Anne R., and Rieger, Oya Y. |
Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging
for Libraries and Archives (2000) |
5
|
6
|
0
|
| Poster, Mark |
The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism
and Social Context (1990) |
5
|
5
|
0
|
| Wenger, Etienne |
Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning
, and Identity (1998) |
5
|
5
|
0
|
- You are to read the book closely, and consider the viewpoint of
the author in the context of other things you have learned inside
and outside of this class.
- You are to discuss the contents of the book with others who have
chosen it. The TA will provide places on the Discussion Board,
under the Book Discussion topic, for the comments on each different
book being reviewed by students.
- You are to write an essay reviewing your book. Email the essay
to the course emailbox
as a Microsoft Word attachment.
- Be sure to review the book that was written, not the book
that was not; be evaluative, but not dismissive.
- Identify specific strengths and weaknesses of the book
you are reviewing, and state explicitly why they are strengths
and weaknesses.
- Put the book in the context of its importance and/or connection
to information technology and the class as a whole. This
section should be the longest part of your paper.
- Feel free to refer to any other material with which you
are familiar, whether read for this course or not, if you
believe that it applies to your review. Be sure to document
this other material fully and formally.
- You are to join with the others who chose the same book in forming
a group that will organize and present to the class a report on
the book and your joint and individual evaluations of it. Each
student in the group must speak during the presentation, and the
speaking time is to be shared approximately equally among all the
members of the group. The report should take between 15 and 18
minutes. You are strongly encouraged to rehearse your presentations
to ensure both that the presentation will go smoothly and well,
and also that it will not exceed the time limit.. (Note:
Presentations that exceed 18 minutes will not receive a grade above
B; those that exceed 19 minutes will not receive a grade above
C; those that exceed 20 minutes will not receive a grade above
D; and presentations that might exceed 21 minutes will be cut off
at 21 minutes and receive a grade of F.) You are encouraged to
use PowerPoint or other audiovisual support for your group's presentation.
Notes:
1. Why is there a limit on the number of reviewers per book? The reason
is that we feel all the books are worthy, and we hope that all of
the books will be reviewed. Placing a limit on the number of reviewers
of any one book is our way of distributing the reviews over the whole
set of books.
Sometimes this will result in a student's winding up reviewing a book
that for her or him is a second choice, but this is a way of helping
you all expose yourselves to a greater variety of information than
might otherwise be the case.
2. A helpful discussion of how to write a scholarly book review, Academic
Writing: Critical Reviews, is available from the University of Wisconsin—Madison
Writing Center. Another useful guide to how to write a critical review
is How
to Write a Critical Review (Summarize a Research Article); although
its primary focus is on writing reviews of reports on research, this
guide has many worthwhile suggestions about how to carry out the processes
of reading the document to be reviewed, making notes, preparing an outline,
and writing a first draft of your review, editing it, and writing the
final version. Still another such guide, also focussed on writing reviews
of reports on research but with suggestions on evaluations in general,
is Evaluating
Reports of Research.
3. A useful book on general scholarly writing is: Cuba, L. J. (2001).
A Short Guide to Writing about Social Science (4th ed.). New
York: Longman.
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