Handbook of Information Management, 8th ed.

A small point, but one that is necessary, if readers are not to go looking for books that never existed, is that this is not the 8th edition of the title, Handbook of Information Management. The first edition appeared, if my memory serves me, under the title of Handbook of Special Librarianship and Information Work, in 1955 and maintained that title for seven editions. Technically, therefore, this is the first edition of the Handbook of Information Management, and ought to be advertised as such.

This volume differs from the early editions of its predecessor in ways that reflect the changing nature of work in this area. When I became a special librarian many years ago, the Aslib Handbook really was the beginner’s bible. Its chapters constituted, in effect, a job description of a specific role, mainly in business and industry, and could be used to gain a basic familiarity with pretty well all of the tasks that a special librarian generally undertook: classification and indexing, abstracting, library design, and many more. I consumed it from beginning to end and it stayed on my desk as a handy tool not only for the time I was a special librarian, but also when I began to teach.

It is interesting to reflect that this piece of jargon, “special librarian” was as puzzling as “information manager” is today – a non‐librarian once asked me what was “special” about me! What he would have said if I had told him I was a “knowledge manager”, I can imagine all too well!

That was about 1959 and the major change that has taken place in the intervening 43 years is that the information function has become much more widely distributed over organisations, mainly because of the application of information technology and, particularly, distributed systems with the personal computer as the workstation. As a result, “special” libraries have been closing down as electronic delivery of information to the desktop has arrived, or simply because companies have decided that “just‐in‐time” information provision costs less than “just‐in‐case” information. For example, carrying out interviews in a major insurance company recently, I casually enquired about the company library: “Oh no”, said the director I was interviewing, “We closed that when the last librarian retired. Now, whenever we need anything, we simply pick up the phone and ask for it. After all, here in the City we have all of the business and financial information providers”.

The Handbook of Information Management reflects this state of affairs, although it is not spelled out specifically as part of the philosophy behind the book. I cannot remember how many chapters the first of the old handbook had, but it had 387 pages, compared with the 546 in this. It also had a coherent structure, so that the beginning librarian could work through the chapters in something approaching a rational way, or at least quickly locate a remembered chapter when it was needed again.

This volume appears to have no organising structure at all. Indeed, rather than being a “handbook”, it has more the character of a collection of papers on the general theme of information management. For example, the first chapter is entitled, “Digital library services: an overview of the hybrid approach”, and this is immediately followed by “Staffing the special library”. “Information audits” appears between “Information needs assessment” and “Performance measures and metrics”. The only area where some cohesion is evident is in relation to the legal situation, where chapters are given, in succession, on copyright, data protection, liability, freedom of information, and “Legal issues of the Internet”.

There is a wide degree of variation in the size and character of the chapters, again, reminiscent of a collection of papers or a conference proceedings. Some pieces are substantial, and the author has made a serious effort to provide the kind of guidance expected of a “handbook”. The first chapter is an example of this. Eastwood and Tompson give us a well‐organised chapter of 42 pages, with five pages of references, that will serve as a useful introduction to this topic. On the other hand, Munn offers a “consultancy‐speak” 14 pages entitled, “Knowledge management: working at the speed of ‘e”’ – the content of which is just about as meaningless as the title. It is perhaps typical of the advocate of “KM” that no coherent framework is presented: instead we have exhortation and hyperbole. Bell’s piece on marketing is similarly slight, but at least helpful, although the number of references is rather meagre.

Overall, one has the impression that too much has been attempted here: we have 26 chapters where perhaps half that number would have sufficed. Many of the chapters are genuinely useful. As most of them are written by practitioners or information consultants with wide experience, they have a practical orientation which the beginning information manager will find useful. However, perhaps the second edition of this Handbook will be more coherent, if the world of information in organisations attains some coherence.