Information Science in Transition

Gilchrist, Alan (ed.). Information science in transition London: Facet, 2009. 416 pp. ISBN 978-1-85604-693-0. £49.95Functioning as a rich exploration of the deep and expansive domain that is information science as we understand it today, this timely monograph showers the reader with pithy, lucid, and insightful meteoritic nuggets, spanning the field's humble beginnings and following through to provide perceptive predictions of possible futures for those working in, and with, this dynamic and everexpanding terrain. Corralled into chapter-like layers covering such varied issues as Information Retrieval, Electronic Scholarly Publishing and Open Access, Bibliometrics, Social Informatics, Knowledge Organization, Health Informatics, and Chemical Information Science (to name just a few of the varied topics), it offers something for every type of information science professional and explores a little something of all types of information too. That this title contains a myriad of major league players (Cronin, Meadows, Dextre Clarke, Garfield and Oppenheim, for example), all offering their thoughts and opinions on the field, is an obvious point in its favour; however, what enables it to stand out definitively is the narrative drive framing a number of the cogent papers that are expertly curated together here. In particular, Dextre Clarke's 'The last 50 years of knowledge organization: a journey through my personal archives' (pp. 45-62) leads with this strategy, very successfully weaving an insightful chronological exploration alongside fascinating individual experience. This includes 'optical coincidence cards': 'It sounds so laborious now! But at the time these card systems represented huge progress and delivered real efficiency gains', and her work in Latin America in the early to mid 70s - including creating a Spanish language thesaurus for an Ecuadorean 'Centre for Development'. There has been, since then, Dextre Clarke says, 'a revolution' in how we are capable of managing information, yet she still insists that 'the greatest part of the credit, I feel, goes to enhanced information technology rather than fundamental new thinking in knowledge organization'. A similar personal discursive thread is teased out in Barry Mahon's "The disparity in professional qualifications and progress in information handling: a European perspective' (pp. 283-298), where he too flags the need not only to enable the 'input of new ideas', but also how crucial it is that 'the current professional bodies recognize the benefits to be gained by embracing the ideas created by newcomers to the information sector'. His succinct and punchy account matches, in both brevity and weightiness, Tom Wilson's fascinating paper 'The information user: past, present and future' (pp. 95-107), and correspondingly issues a clarion call to IS professionals for the need to directly address change from within. Wilson expertly sums up the dilemma within the field of translating research into practice, and warns that 'the danger of disconnection between practice and academe' can ultimately lead to a division so complete as to find 'both sets of players simply ignoring] what is happening in the other "world"'. …