REVIEWS

I in the Sky: Visions of the Information Future. Ed. by Allison Scammell. London: Aslib/IMI, 1999. 307 pp. price not reported soft ISBN 0851424317

This book is an eclectic collection of invited papers on the subject of �the future of information�. In order to generate a wide response neither �information� nor �the future� were defined. Authors from diverse backgrounds were asked to speculate from their own experience and produce a personal vision of the future nature, applications and implications of information. The result is 41 papers from a variety of authors, mostly British.

Some authors took the opportunity to rehash their theses of how information should be defined, expecting that the future would prove them right. Others used the book to promote themselves and their organisation�s ways of handling information. Some merely recycled their latest conference papers. Mostly the papers follow the pattern of standard futuristic essays, taking a minor element of today�s world and extrapolating this into the future. Sometimes this works. Richard Wakeford, for example, offers a thought provoking view of the world in ten thousand years time. Charles Handy writes a conversational piece giving his view as a non specialist. Most of the essays are in fact written by non-academics, and it shows. Getting fresh ideas from people in different walks of life certainly does bring in new viewpoints, but in the main these authors are not professional writers and certainly not academics, so a distressingly high number of the papers suffer from unfounded assertions, generalisations, evidence based on single instances and other weaknesses which would never be allowed in an academic journal. On the other hand, the academic writers are not perfect either: Amanda Spink�s opaque text is academic writing at its most impenetrable.

The editor�s loose brief produced an extraordinary range of formats. There are dialogues, stories, opinions, speculation, hobby horsing, extrapolations and journal papers. Unfortunately, the range of quality is equally varied. Most of them are light essays from people who are not information professionals, and the overall quality of argument is the sort of stuff you would hear down the pub. There are two or three really outstanding, insightful papers, but sadly there is an awful lot of dross to sift through to get to them.

David Mason
Victoria University of Wellington

This volume claims to compile new thinking about the consequences of the Information Revolution. It is deliberately multidisciplinary because by seeking multiple perspectives on a major societal shift, the editors hope to identify key issues and their interactions. They start from the standpoint that information technology is an enabler but not the real driver of new trends. Rather, they say, it is the mass of data, cheaper and more easily shared than before, that will be the cause of profound change.

There are six sections in the book: implications for modern management, implications for the workplace, implications for academia, implications for political affairs, implications for �information societies� and predictions. The interest for library and information managers lies mostly in the first and third of the sections, with the collection of �predictions� having some curiosity value.

One of the better papers in the collection is the very first one on �Measuring the Information Age Business� by Gary S. Tjaden of the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Using mathematics that most could understand with a little effort he has built a productivity measurement approach for information-based work. Knowledge productivity as a metric is a new approach and worthy of further examination. William H. Read�s �Knowledge Capital Management Principles for Every Organization�s Five Most Valuable Assets� is good material for management theory, though not necessarily useful for information managers. Scott Cunningham�s �Revolutionary Change in the Electronic Publication of Science� is closer to the mark and this is a useful paper that covers the ground well

Ten of the 16 papers found here were first published in Technology, Analysis & Strategic Management 8, 3 (1996), and that means that they were already at least two years old before this edited volume was published. The book includes an author index and a subject index. The papers chosen for this volume have some value, but much the same things have been said several times over by a wide variety of authors. Readers of this journal would almost certainly find Christine Borgman�s From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in the Networked World (MIT Press, 2000) closer to home, and Frank Webster�s Theories of the Information Society (Routledge, 1995) more consistent in its conceptual approach.

Philip Calvert
Victoria University of Wellington

There are numerous articles published in English over the last two decades addressing various aspects of library and information services in the People�s Republic of China (PRC). Yitai Gong and G. E. Gorman�s new book, Libraries and Information Services in China, is one of the very few titles that presented readers with a comprehensive overview of the subject.

There are eight chapters in the book, organized into three parts. The first two chapters present the history and general overview of libraries in China. Chapters 3 through 6 examine each of the principal activities in which Chinese libraries currently engage, including: collection development and resource sharing; cataloguing, classification and universal bibliographic control; reader and information services; automation and information technology. The seventh chapter looks at the future of libraries and information services in China.

The last chapter provides an abbreviated directory of over 100 of the principle libraries in the PRC with address, telephone and fax numbers, brief descriptions of strengths, and URL if available. A chronology of Chinese library development is included in the appendix. Other useful materials included are: the Standards for the Bibliographic Description of Chinese Materials, fields in a full Chinese MARC record, selected Chinese vendors of library materials, and a 13-page bibliography of subject resources published both in China and in the Western media in recent years.

Several years in its making, this book is a result of collaborative work between a Chinese information professional and a Western library science academic. It offers a firsthand and thorough review of library and information services currently in China. The authors make no attempt to address the political culture of the PRC; instead the focus of the book is on current structures, principle activities and future directions of Chinese library and information services. It is different in its approach from another recently published title by Sharon Chien Lin (Libraries and Librarianship in China, Greenwood Press, 1998). Unlike Lin�s work, which examined different types of libraries in China - national libraries, public libraries, academic/school libraries, and special research libraries, this book studies the integral functions of Chinese library information services across different platforms. Together these two books provide readers with a comprehensive analysis of library and information services at the turn of the new millennium.

The book is recommended for information professionals, students of comparative librarianship and Sinologists interested in learning about the development of library and information services in contemporary China.

Wenxian Zhang
Rollins College

As the title of the book indicates, Robert Gitler and the Japan Library School is a collection of informal autobiographical reminiscences of the author. The book covers a span of over 90 years of the interesting life and career of Robert Gitler, who was well known in his own time as a professor, library director, librarian and consultant in the United States and Japan, particularly in the latter. However, the focus of the autobiographical narrative, as well as the book, is on the period between January 1951 to September 1956, during which Gitler served as the founding director of the Japan Library School at Keio University, Tokyo.

As a part of the cultural programme for post-war Japan, Gitler was invited at the end of 1950 by the International Relations Committee of the American Library Association and the Department for Orientation of Occupied Areas to start �a program for the professional education of librarians�. With the financial support first from the Civil Information and Education Section of the Supreme Command for Allied Powers, and then from the Rockefeller Foundation, Gitler successfully founded the Japan Library School, now called the School of Library and Information Science, at Keio University. From selecting the school site to reviewing student applications, from recruiting faculty to putting together a curriculum, Gitler played a central role in the establishment of the library school. By the time he left Japan in 1956, Gitler not only left behind a school of library science comparable to any US programme in the same field, but also a well-trained faculty of Japanese nationals who continued to make the Japan Library School one of the best in Japan.

The book is by no means a formal history based on documentary resources. Rather it is �an informal reminiscence of events� by the author. However, as Michael Buckland, the editor, indicates, the book �is of interest in its own right and also as a resource that could be drawn upon in the future for more formal historical work�. The book can be very useful for historians of library science, particularly for those who are interested in the history of Japanese librarian education. What is more, since the major events narrated in this oral history took place in the first few years of post-war Japanese society and the founding of the Japan Library School was itself a part of US political and cultural programme to reform Japan, Gitler�s reminiscences can be enlightening in understanding the history and culture of this important period in Japanese history.

Although the founding of the Japan Library School was a development of great importance in the history of librarianship in Japan, Robert Gitler and the Japan Library School is not a book of scholarly theories. Instead, it is a practitioner�s personal experience in starting a programme of education for professional librarians - against great odds, with undaunted determination and total devotion. It is these qualities that helped Gitler succeed in his mission and win the hearts of his Japanese colleagues and students. And it is these qualities that make Gitler�s autobiographical narrative interesting and readable.

Meifang Feng
Long Island University

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