finance.-Daniel S. Cheever, Jr., President, Simmons Col- lege, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 021154898.

The Market Value Process: Bridging Customer and Shareholder Value, by Alan S. Cleland and Albert V. Bruno. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995. 244~. $35.95. ISBN O- 7879-02275-6. LC 96-10106.

The authors, who are management consultants, argue that combining customer value (quality for price) and shareholder value (reasonable cost) is the best way to increase the market value of a company. They then present a step-by-step process to create and implement an appropriate “precision strategy” to tar- get the most promising markets and products.

This would be a difficult book for most academic librarians to use, once too intricate and too banal: too challenging for librar- ians unacquainted with general management concepts and tech- niques, and too simple for others reasonably well-read in current business literature. On the one hand, joining customer to share- holder value is hardly unique; but a feature more important to ser- vice organizations (e.g., libraries), employee input, is barely acknowledged. Moreover, all examples use for-profit, price- measured corporations, requiring much mental translation.

The book is not without hidden gems: the importance to cus- tomers of both product and non-product benefits; “creative mar- ket definition,” which could apply when considering the role of the library in the changing academic and knowledge environ- ment; and the “scenario” design process encouraging planning for multiple, even unlikely, futures. “Building Profitable Preci- sion Strategies” emphasizes differentiating yourself from your competition, and communicating benefits to customers. Fur- thermore, the authors have emphasized judgmental processes rather than quantitative detail to prepare reasonable descriptions and forecasts.

Until (and unless) a library’s parent organization chooses to use The Market W&e Process, librarians would be better served with straight-forward, nonprofit-oriented strategic planning books (e.g., John M. Bryson and Farnum K. Alston, Creating and Implementing Your Strategic Plan (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 1995)), or with simply reading general business periodi- cals, which concisely describe various new and old ideas for strategic planning.-Rachel Applegate, College of St. Scho- lastica, 1200 Kenwood Ave., Duluth, MN 55811 crap- plega@facl.css.edu>.

Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations, by Robert D. Austin. New York: Dorset House Publishing, 1996. 216~. $24.95. ISBN O-932633-36-6. LC 96-9146.

In the concluding chapter of this book, after a long and ardu- ous foray into problems and issues related to the author’s approach for measuring performance in organizations, he writes

The fundamental message of this book is that organizational

measurement is hard. The organizational landscape is littered with the twisted wrecks of measurement systems designed by people who thought measurement was simple. . . The first step to solving the measurement problem is facing its true difficul- ties. (pp. 180-181)

The earlier chapters bear testimony to the difficulty likely to be encountered in measuring performance in organizations; they also bear witness to the difficulty in explaining what those difficulties are and offering practical strategies that can be employed successfully.

58 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

This book is the author’s attempt to “sort it all out, to deter- mine which organizational factors allow measurement to work successfully, and which force measurement programs to fail or do damage. Be forewarned, however: This is not a cookbook” (pp. xv-xvi). Three questions “are at the heart of the book”

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xvii):

How should measurement be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations?

Why do real organizations often use measurement inappro- priately, thereby causing measurement programs to fail or do harm?

What are the practical implications of the answers to the first two questions?

Chapters l-3 introduce measurement issues, especially issues that surround measurement failure. Chapters 4-9 describe and explain the author’s proposed model for treating measurement in organizations. Chapters lo- 13 offer “practical” conclusions of the model about management styles. Chapters 14- 16 concerns why measurement dysfunctions occur. The last three chapters discuss broader measurement issues raised in earlier chapters.

The key thrust of the book is in the author’s proposed model of measurement and dysfunction. The model is a customer or service-based approach that while offering several useful ideas seems to be a rehash of topics related to incentives, motivation, and supervision. Peter Hemon and Ellen Altman’s Service Quality in Academic Libraries (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996), while perhaps not proposing a particular model, will be of much more usefulness for readers wishing to measure organizational services from a customer perspective.

When reading the book, one has the sense of always being at 30,000 feet and wanting desperately to touch ground and have some concrete and practical suggestions on how to design, implement, maintain, and improve systems or programs for measuring organizational performance. Thus, to a large degree, the author fails to answer adequately the three key questions he proposed to answer in the preface. Moreover, there simply are too many types of organizations and situational contexts in organizations that affect the types and appropriateness of mea- surement techniques. Such situational considerations are inade- quately considered by the author.

To some degree, the book offers a personal travelogue dis- cussing issues, conceptual concerns, and problems associated with measuring organizational performance. Measuring organi- zational performance is important and can be done, but this book leaves one with the feeling that it is not worth the effort. Clearly, the book is not a cookbook, and after reading the work, readers will be hard-pressed about how to apply the author’s views in any organizational context--the least of which being academic libraries. While some of the discussions are of interest to organizational measurement theorists, instructors, and per- haps economists, the day-to-day manager will find little of use here.-Charles R. McClure, Distinguished Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244.

Soft Systems Analysis and the Management of Libraries, Information Services and Resource Centers, by Peter G. Underwood. London: Library Association Publishing, 1996 (Distributed by UNIPUB). 189~. $45.00. ISBN l-85604- 150-6.

This book is intended for library practitioners seeking to apply systems theory to their organizations. It is written in a clear, concise style, with an emphasis on concrete examples and applications. The question, of course, is why apply a systems analysis in a library environment? Why this, and not any number of other “management solutions?” A “soft systems” approach, according to the author, provides the most effective set of tools for the conceptualization of problems and solutions in the rap- idly changing organizations that libraries have become.

What is “soft” in systems analysis? As part of a general trend in the social and management sciences, soft systems analysis favors a flexible approach to tools. That too often the systems inherent information organizations are conceived as “rigid” is an underlying assumption of this book. A quantitative approach to problem solving, for example-what is not necessarily soft in systems analysis-tends to over generalize individuals into aggregates, and, thus, has limited predictive value. Soft systems theory encourages the incorporation of multiple perspectives. The empowerment of staff and the articulation of problem solu- tions from individual points-of-view might be a practical upshot of this. The analysis of hard systems generally deals with “known” quantities and how to do things with those quantities; soft systems analysis is more about defining systems that have blurry outlines (e.g., those that involve humans) and figuring out what to do with them.

Topics covered include planning cycles, working with groups, the tools of soft systems analysis (interviews, models and model building), and there is a helpful section on further reading. On the whole, it is an excellent treatment of systems thinking in library management, and a good resource for anyone seeking to understand better their organization.-Steven Ellis, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park, PA 16802.

The Subject Approach to Information, 5th ed., by A.C. Foskett. London: Library Association Publishing, 1996 (distributed by UNIPUB). 456~. $75.00. ISBN I-85604-048-8.

The decision by the editors of JAL to review what is purport- edly only a textbook attests to the status of this classic work by A. C. Foskett, School of Communication and Information Stud- ies, University of South Australia. In five major sections, the author both describes the theory of subject analysis and its applications, and examines its importance in “optimizing our responses for requests for information” (p. 10). Foskett notes, in his introduction, that the nearly universal adoption of computers for the storage and retrieval of information has required a “rad- ical revision” (p. vii) of the 4th (1982) version of his work: most chapters have been rewritten or heavily revised, save those that deal with first principles, such as the concepts of recall, rele- vance, and recision.

Part I, “Theory of Information Retrieval Systems,” is an excellent explanation and review of the structures of informa- tion systems. One chapter provides a concise history of devel- opments in computer and telecommunications technology; rarely does one find the mysteries of cyberspace explained without condescension or obfuscation. In this edition, the author also includes for the first time fundamentals for the con- struction of thesauri; those chapters should be mandatory read- ing for librarians (and others) organizing local collections or collections which are not preserved well by more commonly used indexing languages such as LCSH or ERIC.

Part II, on pre-coordinate indexing systems, discusses the work of specific individuals (Cutter, etc.) and particular subject schemes for subject analysis (e.g., PRECIS) in the context of the basic requirements for a systematic arrangement of subject matter. Foskett’s discussions of citation order, filing order, the principle of inversion, and facet analysis remind the reader whose library education might be a distant memory that the library profession has made a significant contribution to the way knowledge is (or might be) organized and retrieved.

Part III, on pre-coordinate indexing languages, is one of the lesser-revised sections of the book, dealing with various classi- fication systems, including Dewey, UDC, Colon, and LC. But even here, the author takes care to revise his opinions of the use- fulness and theoretical strengths and weaknesses of these sys- tems: see c. 21, for instance, for his judgment on Colon classification and Ranganathan’s contributions to librarianship. Foskett’s end-of-chapter bibliographies and discussions of indexing languages demonstrate the currency of his research; even his account of Dewey mentions its electronic manifesta- tions and the basic changes to Dewey 2 1, newly arrived in my library the very month that Foskett’s book was published. In Part IV, “Post-coordinate Indexing Languages,” Foskett sum- marizes the structures underlying both new (e.g., ASSIA) and pioneering thesauri (e.g., MeSH and PEC). Especially useful is a new chapter on thesauri for visual art and graphics; Foskett notes, quite rightly, that the computerization of images has pointed up the extraordinary attention which has been paid to the technical problems of digitization, at the expense of true subject access.

The last section of the book, entitled “The Future,” deals with digital libraries. Strangely, this chapter is a disappoint- ment. There is a review of intellectual property concerns, dis- cussions of the implications of digitization for libraries and librarians, and the usual recitation of the multiplicity of sources now available for locating information. But this seems another cry in the wilderness, the now common complaint of library professionals in an electronic world dominated by technicians. Foskett urges his implied readers (fellow librarians or librari- ans-to-be) to “seize the opportunities offered to use our profes- sional skills and judgment” (p. 432). It is the body of Foskett’s book, with its substantive treatment of subject analysis, and not this final hortatory chapter, which convinces the reader of the value of a structured approach to information, and of librarians’ abilities to provide information, and not just bits of data, to library users.

The Subject Approach to Information is complemented by author and subject indexes, up-to-date bibliographies, including helpful directions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and chapter summaries (though only for some chapters). A glos- sary would have been a welcome feature, though it must be admitted that the subject index points the reader to terms with- out the expense of additional glossary pages. A recommended acquisition for college and university libraries, or for any library seeking to organize its resources based on principle, and not accident.-Cecile M. Jagodzinski, Milner Library, Illinois State University, Campus Box 8900, Normal, IL 61790-8900 ccecile@mbsgate.mlb.ilstu.edu>.

Team Management, by Robert Bluck. London: Library Association Publishing, 1996. 52 p. $35.00. ISBN 1-85604-167-O.

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