Information 2.0: New Models of Information Production, Distribution and Consumption

This is avowedly a student text for modules on the information society, but frankly any professional over a certain age might look to it for help. De Saulles sets out to address the current geography of information in comprehensive, coherent and succinct form. The term “geography” is chosen advisedly because, although there is some necessary history, the book is a guide to navigating around the world of information as it is now. It begins with a definition of information (straightforward and not self‐consciously clever) and in the course of about 120 pages reaches some implications for information professionals, publishers and society more broadly. In between it touches on aspects of the information society, both familiar and less familiar. A reviewer whose own breadth of expertise does not match the author's judges the quality of the content first by the accuracy of what is said about the phenomena he does know. Looked at in this sampling kind of way, the sections on the storage of information in digital archives and institutional repositories are strong and solid. On disintermediation and the new intermediaries, the text is informative and contains useful insights. The remarks on e‐book delivery models and their effect on library lending are timely. So far so good, and on the topics with which the reviewer is less familiar, there is convincing explanation. Good use is made of boxed‐text case studies on topics such as podcasts (The TWiT Network), institutional repositories (University of Southampton E‐prints), online video (The Khan Academy) and online retailing (Amazon). However, there could usefully have been more of these and they could have been presented much more effectively on the page. This is a pity in a book that is short enough to allow scope for more than this slightly thin scatter of worked‐through examples. There are also other good features: for example, each chapter ends with some questions intended as discussion or revision points. This review began by calling the book an attempt to deal with what is an enormous topic, or group of topics, comprehensively (it largely succeeds), coherently (there is a definitely an overall vision of Information 2.0) and succinctly (as already mentioned it does not waste words). Whilst there might be scope for much longer, more detailed books on the topic, there is a strong case for saying that sticking to the essentials is a virtue when so much changes so fast. In consequence, to suggest an annual update of this textbook would not be unreasonable. In that case De Saulles and his publisher were probably wise to concentrate on the concepts and leave the mountains of detail to the discussion lists, blogs and journals.