Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 35, 2001

Citation

Line, M.B. (2002), "Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 35, 2001", Library Management, Vol. 23 No. 6/7, pp. 345-346. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.2002.23.6_7.345.1

This volume of ARIST follows the now familiar pattern of thorough reviews of selected topics. It has nine chapters, whose somewhat artificial grouping of chapters into four sections (two of which have only one chapter each) can be ignored. All but one of the chapters are between 35 and 50 pages long; the exception is chapter 4, which at a massive 130 pages occupies over a quarter of the text of the book.

The first six chapters are likely to be of interest to few but specialists. The first two, entitled “The concept of situation in information science” (Cool) and “Conceptual frameworks in information behavior” (Pettigrew, Fidel and Bruce), are highly theoretical. “Distributed information management” (Pottenger, Callahan and Padgett), “Digital privacy: toward a new politics and discursive practice” (Doty – the very long chapter 4), “Subject access points in electronic retrieval” (Hjørland and Nielsen), and “Methods of generating and evaluating hypertext” (Blustein and Staveley) are also theoretical, but will be of value to practitioners in the relevant fields.

The chapters likely to be of widest interest are those on “digital preservation” (Yakel) and “Knowledge management: an introduction” (Mac Morrow). Rather surprisingly, neither of these topics of major current interest has been covered in ARIST before. The conclusions of both chapters are wise. Yakel calls for “an increased variety of research methods and more rigorous methodologies” in digital preservation, and Mac Morrow is almost certainly right in stating: “Knowledge management is not a chimera. It is not a fad nor is it a prescribed solution. Rather, it represents a way of managing and behaving, which, to be successful, must be integrated and embedded in the organization … ”.

Another chapter that promises to be of wide interest, Logan and Hsieh‐Yee’s “Library and information science education in the nineties” (which incidentally has far more references than any chapter except chapter 4), proves to be almost exclusively concerned with the situation in the USA. Since LIS education all over the world experienced similar huge changes, the fact that American changes are discussed without any international context must limit its value even to US readers.

This leads to a more general point. The number of review annuals in library and information science has increased over recent years. They nearly all suffer from one crucial weakness: their almost exclusive concentration on English‐language publications. In this volume, only the chapter by Hjørland and Nielsen refers to any foreign‐language items, and most of the rest, written as they are by Americans, are further restricted to US publications. True though it may be that a large proportion of relevant matter is published in the USA, and that much of the rest is also in English, it is important that researchers should be aware of other material, of which there is plenty. Can ARIST not aim to provide truly international coverage?

The end‐of‐chapter references contain some oddities. It is unlikely that readers would seek The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia under “The” (p. 334), nor an article titled “Dean’s list … ” under “Library journal” (p. 466). The former at least is in its correct place in the admirable main index. (I dislike the style of journal references used in ARIST, but that may be a matter of personal taste.)

It should be recorded that Martha Williams has been editor of ARIST for 25 of its 35 years of publication: an amazing record for such an onerous task.

In all, despite the limitations it has in common with other ARIST volumes, this is well up to standard – and, as a large book that is expensive to produce, remarkably good value at $100.