The Craft of Librarian Instruction: Using Acting Techniques to Create Your Teaching Presence. By Julie Artman, Jeff Sundquist, and Douglas R. Dechow. Chicago: ACRL, 2016. 100 p. Paper $38 (ISBN 978-083898821-3).

The idea of teaching classes is understandably intimidating to many new library professionals. The prospect of bombing a presentation in front of a room full of familiar classmates is bad enough, never mind the possibility of failure before an audience of strangers when one’s job performance is at stake. Fortunately, The Craft of Librarian Instruction: Using Acting Techniques to Create Your Teaching Presence offers support and real-world advice for new teaching librarians. In a short one hundred pages, the book sidesteps long, heavy-handed chapters, and instead offers up tips that can be immediately practiced and incorporated into one’s teaching.

As the title suggests, most of the book’s content focuses on using theater techniques to improve one’s classroom presence. The first chapter describes simple physical and vocal warm up exercises that, if practiced before teaching a class, could significantly improve the experience for both teacher and students. The book also offers advice on how to deal with common but stressful situations such as facing technology failures or being unable to answer a student’s question. (Spoiler: handle the situation calmly, preferably with some humor, and don’t sweat it too much.) Most importantly, the book clearly demonstrates how acting principles are relevant to library instruction. For example, the book offers sound advice on how to develop an appealing teaching style by tapping into one’s best personality traits. It also reminds its readers of the important but often overlooked skill of coming to class fully prepared, including having a clearly defined set of learning objectives in-hand before class starts.

The Craft of Librarian Instruction’s conversational tone and “you can do it” approach should appeal to anyone new to teaching. Graduate assistants and new librarians in reference departments will find the couple of hours required to read this book well worth the short time investment. Even experienced teaching librarians will find advice here that can be used to improve their classroom presence quickly and noticeably. This reviewer certainly would have liked to have had this book before teaching her first instruction session as a graduate assistant.—Allison Embry, Research and Learning Librarian, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, Oklahoma