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Extensive revised edition analyses the information environment


THIS­textbook­builds­ upon, updates, rewrites and­extends­its­first­edition­ to provide, in 19 chapters, a­thorough­coverage­of­ contemporary informa- tion science.


It starts with a review of the foundations and components of information science as a discipline, expanding to the developments of recorded information and philosophies of information. The authors explain many key theories and paradigms, and the place of information in the world in which we live. Documen- tation coverage includes document history, theory, organisation and a short explanation of collections and collection management. Modern technologies are placed in the context of where they have come from, and include data and information systems.


The authors handle infor- mation practice from a wide viewpoint including methods, quality and reliability, ethics and law, literacies and modern information man- agement. Human aspects of information management include aspects of behavioural science, group dynamics and characteristics of individuals. Research in and possible future directions for infor- mation science as a discipline and a profession round off the book.


Content is generally consistent, with clear logic and disciplined construc- tion. It has a research and evidence-based armature.


48 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL


Exploring the socio-cultural debates around the access to old books


GREGG’S slim volume is part of a series of ‘Elements’­


­offering­


Bawden, David and Robinson, Lyn. Introduction to Information Science. 2nd ed. London: Facet Publishing, 2022. 386 pp. 978 1 78330495 0. £55.


Concepts and terminology are italicised and are placed in context and explained, generally in refreshingly plain language.


For CILIP members using the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB), the book has something to offer for over 70 per cent of its knowledge and skill areas. Through its content structure readers are encouraged to reconsider areas they do not currently assess as relevant, due to the book’s thorough coverage of inter-relation- ships of information theories and components.


introductions to aspects of­­publishing­and­book­ culture, aimed at an informed audience. It is available via the Cam- bridge Elements website as an open access publication and as a paid-for printed version. The main aim of the book is to make its readers ‘better users and readers of digital archives’ (abstract). It does this by pre- senting a detailed case study of how Eighteenth-Century Collec- tions Online (ECCO) originated and developed over time to the present day. Gregg’s key question, which is transposable to any digital database – full- text or otherwise – is ‘what is it that we are looking at when we access and use digitised or digital content?’


Keith Wilson


Construction Information Consultant


Gregg’s starting point is that the origins of online databases are complex and messy, rooting them in the wider context of the history of media technologies, commercial interests, and the ever-changing research land- scape. A helpful timeline situat- ing the beginnings of ECCO in 1976 precedes the introduction (chapter one), although Gregg’s second chapter, on the ‘prehis- tory’ of the database, goes back to the late nineteenth century. The third chapter weaves the physical book into the narrative. Although ECCO was presented as an unprecedented oppor- tunity to offer easy access to the text in an alternative – non-bookish – format, it meant that the physicality of the book was diminished. Gregg argues


Gregg, S. H. Old Books and Digital Publishing: Eighteenth-century collections online. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 132 pp. 978 1 10872069 4. £10 (print).


that in the process of remediating (the transfer from one medium to another) the meaning of a text is changed.


Having made that point through a series of mini case studies of individual books, Gregg returns to his history of ECCO in the fourth and fifth chapters.


The discussion turns rather technical and is perhaps not of as much interest to the average ECCO user, but overall this is a valuable contribution to the discussion of the affordances and limitations of digital full- text databases.


Danielle Westerhof Durham University


September 2022


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