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The scholarly and practical literature on public libraries and librarianship is extensive, but for many years now there has been no adequate single-volume introduction to the field. Kathleen de la Pena McCook's Introduction to Public Librarianship not only provides a readable introductory textbook for library students and experienced practitioners alike, but does so in a way that challenges us to think beyond narrow institutional concerns and objectives and ground librarianship in our commitment to cultural democracy and social justice.
A library educator at the University of South Florida, McCook is perhaps best known as the author of A Place at the Table: Participating in Community Building (Chicago: American Library Association, 2000), and the vision of public libraries as community-building institutions is a central theme of this book as well. By functioning as a commons where community voices can come together in authentic dialogue, by developing current collections of titles for the general reader, and by providing readers' advisory and reference/information services, libraries sustain and enhance the public sphere without which grassroots democracy cannot survive and flourish. McCook rightly emphasizes the need for librarians to develop a "philosophical...