REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS

Developing a Successful Service Plan. By Sheila Pantry and Peter Griffiths. The Successful LIS Professional. London: Library Association Publishing, 2000. 98 pp. �13.50 soft ISBN 1856043924

Developing a Successful Service Plan is a small work but provides a number of practical ideas about service plans, how to develop a successful service plan, and how to maximise the advantages of using service plans to provide customer-oriented, quality information services. A good service plan is essential for all types of information service organisations. Library and information staff at all levels have to commit actively to continuous professional development in a dynamic and challenging environment.

Pantry and Griffiths, authors of the book, are information service professionals and experienced trainers. They present a well-organised approach to creating and maintaining a successful service plan relevant to all types of library and information services. The arrangement of the text is logical and easy to understand - it consists of eight chapters, three appendices and a subject index. The chapters cover: why you need a service plan, the content of a service plan, involving others in your service plan, your personal and professional development plans, evaluating and monitoring the plan, ensuring that your service plan stays alive, winning other people over, using your service plan to create a strategic position in your organisation. A sample service plan template, a further reading list with brief descriptions and Web sites, together with a glossary of related terms are added as appendices. At the beginning of each chapter the main ideas of the text are introduced to readers, and at the end those ideas or expected learning outcomes are reviewed. An index to keywords and subjects is also provided.

This title is one in The Successful LIS Professional series that provides practical guidelines for practitioners. This particular volume will benefit LIS staff who plan to add value to the service of their libraries and information centres.

Surithong Srisa-ard
Mahasarakham University

Libraries and Information in the Arab World: An Annotated Bibliography. Comp. By Lokman I. Meho and Mona A. Nsouli. Bibliographies and Indexes in Library and Information Science, 12. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. 349 pp. US$79.50 hard ISBN 031331098X

The importance of bibliographical tools is not new to Arabs. On the contrary Arabs advocated and developed this domain more than other nations during the classical period of their civilisation. However, after the introduction of printing to Europe Arab ascendancy in this domain waned, and the Europeans overtook them in the systematisation of their bibliographic works. It is believed that the first co-operation among Arab countries to produce regional bibliographies began in 1972, when ALECSO (the Arab League for Education, Culture and Sciences Organisation) published the first issue of the Bulletin of Arabic Publications. This constitutes a cumulation of the content of Arab national bibliographies, as well as bibliographic details from Arab countries which do not have national bibliographies.

In this new Western bibliography on Arabic librarianship Meho and Nsouli aim at filling a gap in the coverage of world librarianship and library and information science by offering a comprehensive guide to published works on libraries and information centres of all types in the Arab countries. Items treated are mainly in Arabic, English and French, with some in German, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Italian. To facilitate the use of this bibliography items are grouped in 23 chapters - 21 chapters by country names and two chapters covering general and Arabian Gulf works. Within the chapters items are classified under broad subject headings and arranged in alphabetical order under author surnames. In addition to these chapters the bibliography includes a preface and a brief introductory study to the history and development of libraries and information technology in the Arab world from the earliest times to the present, but with no reference list or footnotes.

The bibliography includes 1011 items published between 1977 and 1998 and consists mainly of journal articles, books, conference papers and theses. Entries have full bibliographic details, including author, title, volume and issue numbers, place and date of publication, publisher and pagination. Annotations are long and informative when taken from abstracts provided with the original items and short when prepared by the compilers. Only few entries are not annotated, apparently due to the disappearance of the full text. As for the indexes, it includes conventional separate author, title and subject indexes, but not a source index for periodicals and book publishers. The source index is vital for locating periodicals and publishers - either Web sites or contact addresses.

It would have been more useful to have this bibliography on CD-ROM or hosted on a Web site; then the updating could have been easier and the links to publishers� Web pages a simple matter. This bibliography certainly fills a gap in our control of the literature on Arabic librarianship and information studies, and it is a reasonably comprehensive guide despite overlooking many of the items in the bibliography of my 1995 London University thesis. It is highly recommended for all scholars of the Arab world, librarians and library school libraries with aninterest in international librarianship. It joins a small but important group of bibliographies in this field, most of which are in Arabic only.

Imad Bachir
Lebanese University

LOEX of the West: Collaboration and Instructional Design in a Virtual Environment. Eds. Kari Anderson et al. Foundations in Library and Information Science, 43. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1999. 282 pp. price not reported hard ISBN 0762305495

The globalisation in promoting student-centred education and lifelong learning as well as novel information technology and advanced communication systems is forcing higher education institutions worldwide to change their performance, activities and roles. The academic library�s activities and roles are part of this change.

This collection presents 19 papers delivered at the second LOEX of the West Conference in June 1996. The theme of the conference was �collaboration and instructional design in a virtual environment�, and the content of the collection is divided into three sections reflecting this theme: Building Collaborations, Instructional Design, Virtual Environment.

Building Collaborations includes a paper entitled �Collaboration and Instructional Design: Necessary Campus Partnerships for Success in the Twenty-first Century�. This conveys the key message of why collaboration is necessary for libraries in meeting the shifting demands of the scholarly community. Additionally, it describes the experience of developing a faculty development partnership with four units of the University of Arizona. Other papers present real-life experiences as well as practical ideas and suggestions for developing successful working relationships with other libraries, academic departments and computing centres at different universities. Taken together, the ideas and experiences expressed in this group of papers are very useful for anyone considering similar sorts of collaboration between libraries and other academic units.

Instructional Design also includes a number of interesting papers. These include (1) the Library of Arizona State University and the Center for Writing across the Curriculum collaboration in creating a new undergraduate gateway course in global business, (2) the University of Botswana�s integrated learning communities and library instruction in the virtual environment, and (3) the University of Guelph�s Department of Computing and Information Science and Library jointly developed computer and information literacy course for undergraduates.

Virtual Environment focuses on using the WWW as a tool for information literacy instruction. Five papers fall into this category, including �Using the Internet to Link Students and Educators and Teach Library Literacy Skills� at Virginia Tech�s University Libraries, and �Collaboratively Developing and Teaching a Multi-institutional College Credit Internet Course�, which was developed cooperatively by academic librarians from each institutions of higher education in Utah.

To sum up, this book provides information on innovative initiatives, real experiences and novel practice in the area of library collaboration. Even though each collaborative situation is unique, there are some issues that are universal. I highly recommend this book to all librarians and information professionals planning to create some kind of collaboration in instructional design.

Nongyao Premkamolnetr
King Mongkut�s University of Technology Thonburi

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