A sound, well printed and laid out production from CILIP, with a good clear Index, this book contains 16 useful and varied papers by some of the most perceptive and authoritative LIS practitioners working today. This collection of papers has been culled from existing and past journals of LIS and provides some fascinating insights into areas such as the founding and history of Information Science as a discipline. Some o f the struggles and insights from the great names of Information Science are well recorded. Much of the written history of the early days of Information Science has been lost, erased or pulped so memory and oral history tries to suffice and fill in the gaps. So the inclusion of some of the “Great and good” of Information Science – Jason Farradane, Jack Meadows, and Alan Gilchrist for example – is highly appropriate and germane.
Charles Oppenheim provides a well written and lucidly argued review of the concepts of “Open access” and the electronic publishing sector in academia, and the arcane sense of bibliometrics gets a good workout from Mike Thelwall. There is an entertaining paper from Eugene Garfield entitled “How I learned to love the Brits” wittily outlining his role in the founding of the Institute for Scientific Information and, later, the Institute of Information Scientists – now of course subsumed within CILIP. That noted, forward thinker, Blaise Cronin, presents a clear and enlightening account of the impact of various theories on Information Science. I particularly enjoyed his phrase “a congeries of theory fetishists promoting the latest ‘ism’”,
So an interesting, if hefty, volume, stuffed with great words and observations from eminent information scientists. Well indexed and referenced, this is a useful addition to the literature of Information Science from the reputable stable of CILIP's publishing house – Facet Publishing.
