Re: The agency is listed in Jeff Herman's 2004 Guide
>> It's kind of bothersome that Jeff Herman's guide would include such agencies.<<
Agreed. But I don't know of a single guide that doesn't include a few questionable and/or marginal agents--in some cases, like Writer's Market, many. The authors of these books tend to take the agents' responses at face value, and if the "agent" chooses to give false or misleading information (like Robins calling her agency "the largest literary agency in the Midwest"--which actually probably is literally true, given that she probably has at least a couple of hundred clients), it'll be assumed to be true.
IMO, the Herman book, Rachel Vater's book (she used to author the Writers Digest "Guide to Literary Agents" but seems to have struck out on her own with her own book), and Literary Marketplace are the most informative and the most updated, and contain the smallest number of questionables.
- Victoria