Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology

Citation

Calvert, P. (2005), "Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology", Online Information Review, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 435-437. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520510617983

Quite simply, this is a very significant publication. It is impressive in its size and scope, scholarly in its content, delightful in its physical presentation, and what is more it all comes for a very reasonable price. The 650 different authors come from over 50 countries, making this a truly international work. Probably a majority of the authors are academics working at the leading edges of their fields, so even though most chapters are no more than four or five pages in length, they lack nothing in quality and scholarly credibility. Almost every one that I have read shows clear evidence of a research base to it.

This is not a crowded field. Other publications (of which I am aware) that can be compared to this work are the Encyclopedia of Information Systems (Elsevier, 2002), the Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 4th ed. (Nature Publishing, 2000), the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (Dekker, 2003) and the smaller International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science (Routledge, 2003). Only the first title (from Elsevier) is really in the same discipline, and even that is aimed at a different market, its articles being longer than those appearing in the publication reviewed here.

The scope is impressive. Some general subjects are very well served. If you are interested in the alignment of IT policy with corporate strategy, then you will find numerous chapters on different aspects of the general subject. The subject of e‐learning is perhaps even better served – every possible way of examining that topic seems to have been dealt with. Database quality is another subject well covered. There are quite a few chapters on aspects of knowledge management; and mobile communications, especially m‐commerce, is very well served. Programming is given numerous chapters, as is software engineering. Obviously wide concepts such as the web, the internet and the digital economy appear through the whole encyclopedia. Inevitably, some subjects seem less well supported – as an example, I saw little on customer service and its measurement in an online environment.

Each chapter has much the same structure, starting with an Introduction, then commonly sections such as Background, the Issues, and so on, then Future Trends, and a Conclusion. Each chapter ends with a substantial list of references and a glossary. As an example, I will use the chapter, “Experiential perspective on knowledge management” by Kochikar and Suresh. The introduction supplies some history from the last few decades, and then justifies the topic by reference to the benefits being reported by private sector companies that have implemented knowledge management (KM). The next section provides a simple business case for KM, drawing on the literature, and though this will be familiar to the academic, it is all very useful to an undergraduate student beginning an investigation into the value of KM. The next section is about building an organisational KM architecture, and a useful graph and a table illustrate this. The following section is on deciding “how much effort should be devoted to technology”, and this draws on some of the work done by the chapter's authors, plus the very familiar Davenport and Prusak. There is a useful typology of technologies for KM accompanying the text. Next we read about the degree of centralization of responsibility that suits KM. At this point, the references dry up, and only two more are provided before the end of the chapter. This is where the authors appear to be applying their own knowledge to the topic based on their experience with Infosys Technologies of India. There are two brief sections on using synchronous or asynchronous mechanisms for knowledge sharing, and on measuring the benefits of KM. This latter section is rather inadequate to the purpose – it is potentially a huge subject that warrants a few chapters in its own right, and though I looked I could not find much on the topic of measuring KM in the Encyclopedia. There is then a short section on future trends, which the authors believe will be evolving technology rather than anything more starting. Finally, there is a brief conclusion, then 22 references and short definitions of six “key terms”.

Probably the most useful way to use this reference work is to fill the hole between textbooks on the one hand and very basic references, e.g. information from web sites, on the other. The articles are enough in themselves to give to undergraduates, provided they have some basic knowledge of the topic beforehand. As an educator, it was interesting for me to reflect on how I would use this encyclopedia in my teaching. Part of the answer came very quickly when I read the chapter, “Mobile telecommunications and m‐commerce applications” by Tan and Teo. With some speed I made this a key reading for my graduate students in library and information studies, simply because it covers the essentials of new technologies in language that the tyro information manager will find comprehensible, yet within about 2,000 words the authors have condensed all the information I think the students will need to get started on this topic. I doubt I would recommend this chapter to undergraduates, but graduates, even those with no knowledge of communications technologies, ought to be able to draw out the essentials. Students with some experience of information systems, especially those with prior knowledge of the newer telecommunications technologies, will find they understand most of it quite readily. It would also be useful for a student commencing a small research project in this area, because the references would get them started.

The list of references is longer than one might anticipate for a three or four page chapter, and the intention, clearly, is that the list should serve as a guide for further reading, either for study or perhaps even research. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating, so I used a few lists of references to see how much they aided my investigations. The results were mixed. For the chapter titled “E‐mail usage in South Pacific distance eduction” by Frank, Tolland, and Schenk, the references seemed to me to be spot on. I could take these and embark on further study or research and feel confident that I had all the relevant material as I began. The chapter, “Digital literacy and the position of the end‐user”, had a rather less obvious list of references, many coming from the mid and late 1990s, and, oddly, Paul Gilster's Digital Literacy (Wiley, 1997) was missing – though the authors have to make choices, of course.

Now for the bad news. I found my first attempts to discover needed information were frustrated by the rather poor index. If you look in the index for “data mining”, you will find 11 page references. Of course, for an initial investigation into the topic of data mining that might well be enough. I suspect, though, that there is much more in this encyclopedia than those 11 references suggest, and I have certainly found useful information on the topic that was not linked from the index. It seems that the index was generated using only words found in chapter titles – and even then, rather surprisingly, there are omissions – e.g. “Data mining for supply chain management in complex networks” is not under “data mining” or “supply chain” in the index. To make matters worse there are actually two entries for data mining in the index. There is a second index to “key terms” that is quite useful by comparison to the main index. Perhaps these are minor pinpricks to an otherwise laudable achievement.

I would recommend this encyclopedia as a reference work to any tertiary academic library, full stop. Large secondary school libraries would find it very useful, and the price is so reasonable that many could afford it. It should be purchased by all large and medium‐sized public libraries. Some individuals, especially academics teaching information systems, ought to buy it, too.