Annual Review of Information Science and Technology

Citation

Buckland, M. (2006), "Annual Review of Information Science and Technology", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 62 No. 1, pp. 154-156. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410610642101

“ARIST” has been an extraordinarily stable resource for almost four decades, but with these two volumes, the third and fourth volumes edited by Blaise Cronin, some changes are apparent.

Annual review chapters are usually intended to enable one to keep up or catch up in a field with which one is already somewhat familiar. However, some of the chapters in these two volumes depart from that pattern in that they are such clearly written introductions to their topics that they could very well be used as introductory tutorials: For this purpose we recommend the chapters on “Statistical language modelling for information retrieval” (Xiaoyong Liu and Bruce Croft, 2004); “Data mining in health and medical information” (Peter Bath, 2004); “Indexing, browsing, and searching of digital video” (Alan Smeaton, 2004); “The internet and unrefereed scholarly publishing” (Rob Kling); and “Information visualization” (Zhu and Chen, 2005), which emphasizes text data.

One expects technical, formal topics in ARIST: Here the chapters dealing with retrieval include “Web mining: machine learning for web applications” (Hsinchun Chen and Michael Chau, 2004) and “Information retrieval on the web” (Kiduk Yang, 2005). Quantitative topics include Webometrics (Mike Thelwall, Liwen Vaughan and Lennart Björneborn, 2005) and “Bioinformatics” (Gerald Benoît, 2005).

In recent years the treatment of social science aspects has expanded. There is a now major emphasis on the social context and how thoroughly information‐related activities are embedded in the social, political, and legal environment: “Science and technology studies and information studies” (Nancy A. Van House, 2004); “Community and virtual community” (David Ellis, Rachel Oldridge and Ana Vasconcelos, 2004); ICTs and political life” (Alice Robbin, Christina Courtwright and Leah Davis, 2004); “Legal aspects of the web” (Alexandre López Borrull and Charles Oppenheim, 2004); “The social worlds of the web” (Caroline Haythornthwaite and Christine Hagar, 2005); and “Interface design and culture” (Ewa Callahan, 2005), which emphasizes cultural issues. The chapter on “Children, teenagers, and the web” (Andrew Large, 2005) is persuasive that the sheer variety and complexity of web content and of usage results in few and weak conclusions despite a large number of studies.

All too symbolic of these present times is an unusually long chapter on “Domestic security surveillance and civil liberties” (Lee S. Strickland, David A. Baldwin and Marlene Justsen, 2005). It has a heavy US focus, and is proceeded by an essay on the organizational structures of intelligence agencies by editor Blaise Cronin.

Some chapters provide perspectives that are stimulatingly new or different (at least, for this reviewer): “New theoretical approaches for human‐computer interaction” (Yvonne Rogers, 2004); “The use of web search engines in information science research” (Judit Bar‐Ilan, 2004); “Managing social capital” (Elisabeth Davenport, 2005); “Labor in information systems” (Warner, 2005); and “Poststructuralism and information studies” (Ron Day, 2005). Theory is not lacking in information science, but tends to be latent. There is little explicit theorizing, and it tends to be narrowly focused and partisan. Day's chapter is noteworthy because it compares and contrasts different theories, contributing to a much‐needed framework.

The recital of these very varied chapter titles reveals a basic change. Early ARIST volumes were characterized by a limited number of broad topics treated recurrently. Now, almost every chapter has its own unique scope. In effect, ARIST has changed from an “annual review” to an “advances in.”

What is missing? Retrieval and data mining receive attention, but the description and organization of resources (indexing, cataloguing, categorization, classification, and related creative activities), which used to be considered central to the field, has very little coverage, beyond a chapter on (largely automatic) Latent Semantic Indexing (Susan Dumais, 2004). Similarly, the management of information services and systems, traditionally a central concern for information professionals, is also largely absent, although there is a managerial perspective in Preservation of digital objects (Patricia Galloway, 2004) and “Electronic records management” (Anne Gilliland‐Swetland, 2005). It would be wrong to say that ARIST has become academic instead of professional. It is, as it has long been, concerned with both academic and professional concerns: That is a strength of ASIST and of ARIST. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the authors are now almost all full‐time academics, either university faculty or postgraduate students, rather than professionals responsible for information services, though some of them may have had prior professional experience. This constitutes a complete reversal from the earliest ARIST volumes, when authors were either information service providers or employed in research and development centres outside of universities.

The standard use of ARIST, keeping up with one's specialty, is occasionally transcended by a chapter so illuminating that anyone could benefit by reading it. In volume 38, Nancy Van House's account of how information studies is now richly engaged in the wider field of social studies of science and technology presents a radical and impressive departure from the long tradition of shallow and intellectually‐isolated “user studies.” In volume 39, Julian Warner's analysis of information systems in terms of labor notes that technology is the product of the “dead labor” of inventors and machine makers. He also makes and elaborated a distinction between semantic labor (mainly concerned with meaning) and syntactic labor (mainly procedures, often algorithmic and more easily delegated to machines). It is not clear where this analysis will lead, but it illuminates the whole field in a new way.

The coverage is essentially limited to English language publications and, sometimes, with a heavy emphasis on the USA. So far as this reviewer is concerned the level of scholarship and the quality of writing are consistently high by the standards of the “advances in” and “annual review” genre, and very few typos were noticed. One overdue reform is that space is used more economically by reducing the wide spacing between lines: Volume 39 has 46 lines of text per page instead 37. There are also some very welcome technological innovations: ARIST has halftone illustrations, but digital color versions are available online, a cumulative index for all volumes has been announced but was not available when tried by this reviewer, and the full text of recent volumes are becoming available online, initially to ASIST members.

We owe gratitude for a great deal of hard work by the editorial team and the contributors and, for a pleasant change, can commend the publisher for keeping the value high and the price low.