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“Leading from the Middle,” and Other Contrarian Essays on Library Leadership (review)

sources) are inaccurately numbered. Page headers would have enabled readers to orient themselves at a glance while flipping back and forth between various sections. The Atlas suffers from a lack of precision in terminology. Starting with the title, concepts such as librarianship and librarian are used loosely and without clear definition. Lankes appears to be using commonly accepted definitions—a librarian is someone who has an MLS and works in a librarian capacity in a library—overlooking the ambiguity underlying such titles. In 2011, what precisely is a librarian? Many “librarians” lack an MLS and, conversely, individuals with an MLS often fill roles in libraries that do not require that degree. Furthermore, the vast majority of individuals who work in libraries are not MLS librarians, but staff falling under any number of other designations who increasingly find themselves in central roles. One can understand Lankes’ bias as an LIS educator, but the failure to grapple with the ambiguous and evolving nature of the profession is a major weakness of the work. Lankes’ librarian worldview, to borrow his term, seems to be strongly influenced by librarians working in public services; for example, he uses the trope of the reference interview to explain any number of related situations. What of the others working in libraries—systems analysts, archivists, programmers, development staff, etc.—all of whom have quite defined skill sets (putting Lankes’ claim that “the prime value of librarians is not their skill set or their credentials” in question) and apply those skill sets to concrete issues facing libraries on a daily basis. The model set forth in the Atlas privileges a librarian class above all of those people, and reinforces their right to assert control of libraries by dint of precisely those narrow credentials he discounts. Is this a viable, or even descriptive, model for the operation of many libraries? Attempts at humor give the sense that the author is accompanying a bitter pill with some palliative sugar. In fact, none is necessary; the pills Lankes presents are neither bitter nor terribly alarming. Self-referentiality bulks up the text and detracts from narrative cohesion, leading to an overarching “all together now” impression that is reflective of many a library conference or library blog but is off-putting in a work with such an ambitious agenda. Lankes also has a tendency to soft pedal the more erudite sections of his book. The author writes that “two different people reading this can come to different conclusions: Lankes is crazy or Lankes got it right.” The Atlas itself leads me to neither conclusion. There are many salient passages and points in the Atlas, many laudable and critical ideas in play starting from the notion that librarians facilitate knowledge creation in their communities. Had this volume been spared the cumbersome architecture and purged of distracting asides, inside jokes, and digressions, it could well have achieved cult status among librarians and framed future discussions. As it stands, it buckles under its own unfulfilled ambitions.