Magic and Hypersystems is another exciting publication by the American Library Association in which Harold Billings, director of General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin, shares his personal observations about contemporary library network history. He reflects on the impact of the information revolution on libraries and information hubs worldwide by connecting sixteenth‐century information and knowledge organization to the twenty‐first century global systems. Through this revision of the historical foundations of modern library models, Billings shows how libraries can better understand and use these transformative forces to shape a stronger information world.
Due to modern information retrieval technologies, many information specialists have come to question the need for cataloguing and classification skills. Chapter 5 “Supping with the Devil”, stresses that these skills cannot be reduced to a “uniform elemental simplicity” since cataloguing provides an important value‐added dimension to information. With the increasing volume of full‐text information sources that are becoming available, the information object will become its own catalogue entry, identifier, and mechanism for delivery.
Billings pays a lot of attention to cooperation in the information age and shows how these are still important means by which libraries can help meet rising costs, brave the new technologies, and restore a diminishing information base. He further notes that a relational shift is needed so that libraries can also join with the commercial sector in new partnerships to frame the information future.
Chapter 6 touches upon issues such as selection and preservation. Billings suggests here that more attention should be paid to a wide variety of data sources that are at access risk. These not only include “collections housed in libraries and archives, but also new book and journal publications that are increasingly unpurchased for institutional collections, electronic publications and data distributed through digital information systems and collections of books, manuscripts, and other special materials held in private hands” (p. 62).
He also takes a very good look at doomsday predictions for librarianship and the future of library education and librarianship. Billings claims that though librarians and library schools appear to be at risk, university administrators will find that academic programs cannot exist without them. He is also of the opinion that these reports are premature since there are many metamorphoses and relocations under way that tend toward change rather than demise.
Other aspects that have received attention are strategic alliances with information communities and the corporate world; the governance of OCLC and other networking organizations; fees for service; and, the linking of technologies.
Magic and Hypersystems is a valuable book for those interested in library networks and the future of library and information science. It offers a number of fresh ideas for growing the relational library of the future. It includes bibliographies at the end of each chapter and concludes with a very useful index.
