Library, Room 245, Doe Library, Berkeley, CA 94720 <bernie@library.berkeley.edu>.

Managerial Excellence: McKinsey Award Winners from the Harvard Business Review, 1980-1994. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. 335~. $29.95. ISBN O-87584- 670-X. (The Harvard Business Review Book Series).

The Harvard Business Review stands as the preeminent busi- ness journal of our time. Published for over 70 years, it has cre- ated a body of knowledge that reflects the evolutionary nature of the practice of management. Pragmatic, yet innovative, ideas about organizations and the people who work in them have often found their first voice in its pages.

The McKinsey Foundation for Management Research has awarded two prizes each year since 1959 for the best articles published in the Hurvurd Business Review. Criteria include con- tribution to existing knowledge, logic, analytical depth, clear style, and original perspective. Thought-provoking practicality has been at the core of the articles selected by the judges over the years.

Managerial Excellence is a collection of McKinsey award- winning essays published over the past 15 years. As a result, it provides an overview of and insight into the critical issues, ideas, and trends that have influenced what we consider our contemporary approach to management.

As a management trainer and consultant in academic librar- ies during most of this period and an avid reader of the Hurvard Business Revirw, I can vividly remember the personal impact of Richard J. Boyle’s “Wrestling with Jellyfish” (1984); James Brian Quinn’s “Managing Innovation: Controlled Chaos” (1985); Michael E. Porter’s “From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy” (1987); Hamel and Prahalad’s “Strategic Intent” (1989); Charles Handy’s “Balancing Corporate Power: A New Federalist Paper” (1992); and Chris Argyis’ “Good Communication That Blocks Learning” (1994). These were all articles that informed my thinking about the nature of organiza- tions and competitive enterprise.

This book is not a useful compendium of tools that academic library managers can apply to daily tasks. 1 recommend it for the individual who wishes to expand his or her thinking on the world of work by viewing it through the lens of the for-profit perspective. As colleges and universities find themselves in an increasingly competitive environment, some may find it useful to understand how those in the corporate world have defined, managed, and measured effectiveness in their own terms.- Susan Jurow, Executive Director, College and University Personnel Association, 1233 20th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 <sjurow@cupa.edu>.

Managing Information for the Competitive Edge, edited by Ethel Auster and Chun Wei Choo. New York: Neal-Schuman, 1996. 554~. $75.00. ISBN I-55570-2 15-5.

One would have to be nonsentient not to have seen the amount of ink and paper devoted to the discussion of informa- tion management in the for-profit sector. A traditional and stal- wart part of most business curriculums for some time, corporate information management is now sweeping over the landscape of librarianship. This book is a part of that wave.

I will admit a bias at the beginning of the review. I am not convinced that the use of traditional or traditionally-based man- agement techniques are useful or appropriate when applied to

information. The necessary testing to determine if the models are valid still remains to be done. My own disappointment in this book is that there is no testing of this critical hypothesis. But that is my book and not the book being reviewed.

This is a compilation of materials pulled together from a variety of sources. The editors have done a good job in sifting through a massive and growing amount of material. The book will suffer from some reviews where the reviewer’s personal favorites are not chosen, but a work like this will always have those presupposed failings. Overall, the book presents a bal- anced view and remains within its intended scope. The problem is that the scope is very broad.

The preface suggests that the book will be useful to a wide range of persons working in “libraries and information centers to any organization whose products, services, and activities are information-intensive” (p. viii). The editors have taken on too much and thereby create problems for themselves and their readership. This is a book that aims too broadly. Its strength is that it manages to satisfy more segments of the intended audi- ence than it has any right to satisfy. There are good selections here and good lists of suggested reading to augment the selec- tions. Let the reader beware. The readings here are not light reading. This is heavy material and will take some time and thought in working through the concepts presented.

In short, it is not a beginners text. The editors have chosen some of the most dense material in the literature for this book. On one hand, I applaud their choice and, on the other hand, the weight of the material will cause some readers problems. Unfor- tunately, it is probably those who put the book down that have the greatest need to read it. The book will find a place in some libraries and information centers. It will create a need for a sup- porting collection that is either in place or developed in the future. It is recommended as a good source book for those libraries and individuals who already have a commitment to the study of information and information management and have or intend on building a collection in the area. Lacking that commit- ment, it is not a book that will be well received.-C.D. Hurt, Director, School of Library Science, University of Arizona, ‘Btcson, AZ 85719.

Managing Serials, edited by Marcia Tuttle. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1996. 347~. $73.25. ISBN O-7623-0100-7. (Foundations in Library and Information Science series).

This long-awaited volume is the worthy successor to Intro- duction to Serials Munagement (JAI Press, 1983). It provides an overview of the profound and revolutionary changes in serials work that have occurred since 1983: the proliferation of new journals covering specialities and sub-specialities, the astonish- ing rise of subscription prices, especially for scientific, techni- cal, and medical journals, and the transformation of the field through the introduction of new technology which has brought increased control of serial literature in both its management and content.

The work is divided into 14 chapters covering all aspects of serials work: 10 written by Tuttle on topics ranging from the definition and nature of serials, the importance of standards, subscription agents and other serials suppliers, serials pricing, serials acquisition (two chapters) to serials preservation and public access to serials. There are also two chapters by Luke Swindler on serials publishing trends and on serials collection developments, and two chapters by Frieda Rosenberg, one on serials cataloging and another on managing serials holdings.

244 The Journal of Academic Librarianship