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Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods. Eds. Maria T. Accardi, Emily Drabinski, and Alana Kumbier. Duluth, Minn.: Library Juice Press, 2010. 341p. acid-free paper, $35 (ISBN 9781936117017). LC2009-039408

systems, and IR system types (systems for CD-ROM, multimedia, markup languages, Internet, natural language processing, citation analysis, and digital libraries). The final chapter discusses trends in information retrieval in regard to issues from previous chapters. There are a few oddities throughout the book. Curiously, there is an entire chapter devoted to retrieving information from CD-ROMs & online sources, but there is no discussion of more contemporary physical devices such as DVDs, Blu-ray, flash-drives, or cloud servers. There is also no discussion of the economic value of IR systems like the decreasing cost of memory. Chapter nine includes semitechnical mathematical functions that are likely to be difficult for students to grasp (for instance, the vector processing model). The Discussion section of Chapter 12 includes a number of similarly worded summary points, which gave the section a very repetitive feel. Chapter 14 is entirely devoted to early studies on evaluating IR systems. This entire section, while providing interesting historical information, is really out of place from the rest of the book because it does not use contemporary examples. The final chapter, “Trends in Information Retrieval,” is disappointing, for it does not mention some of the current or cutting-edge IR tools like social tagging as one might expect. Overall, this book does a decent job of introducing general concepts of information retrieval without delving into overwhelming detail. In doing so, Chowdhury provides a good understanding of where much of our current systems have come from. Used with current supplemental readings, this book would be a good resource for a basic information retrieval course that focuses on traditional and, to a lesser extent, contemporary retrieval systems. The author has written numerous works related to IR systems—many are cited in this book—that demonstrate his knowledge of IR systems. For a contemporary alternative that focuses on the same topics, but does not go into as much depth or breadth as Chowdhury’s book, consider Heting Chu’s book, Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age.—John Repplinger, Willamette University.