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Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship, Nancy Kalikow Maxwell. Chicago: American Library Association, 2006. 156p. $32 (ISBN 0-8389-0917-5)
More than a decade ago, library educator Sydney Pierce (Catholic University of America) wrote a short but revealing essay entitled, "Dead Germans and the Theory of Librarianship" (American Libraries, September 1992: 641-3). In it, she expressed regret that librarianship did not have enough "dead Germans" to draw upon for its philosophy and intellectual history. Librarianship is, in many respects, a practice-based rather than theoretical profession. How often has a librarian been asked by a stranger, upon learning of his or her occupation, "So what did you learn in library school beyond the Dewey Decimal System?" More seriously, one may argue that with the closure of library schools at the University of Chicago and Columbia as well as curriculum shifts at others such as Berkeley, librarianship has lost interest in purely academic or philosophical discourse. Thus, to put it bluntly, librarians are forced to rely upon theories from other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics, and even theology.
To that end, Nancy Kalikow Maxwell (assistant director, Miami Dade College, North Campus Library), with dual degrees in library science and Catholic theology, has produced a concise but immensely rich volume. She...