Information of the Image 2nd edition

Citation

Duckett, B. (1999), "Information of the Image 2nd edition", Library Review, Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 340-341. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.1999.48.4.340.10

It is not often I lament the absence of a publisher′s blurb, but this is one such occasion.“Information of the Image”: what does that mean? Information about what image? I′ve read the book and I now know that by“image” is meant one′s own personal image of the world, one′s unique weltanschaung. This book is about how the communication process, of which librarians are part, affects this personal construct of the world. Even so, I′m still puzzled about the meaning of the title. The author, it is true, berates us for not knowing more about how communication, and our part in it, affects this“image”, and exhorts us to learn more. Is this what he means? If so, it is only part of his message.

Part One is about principles, principles of information and information flow. Starting with the primacy of the image ‐‐ this unique personal perception of the world ‐‐ the aim of communication can be regarded as the attempt to change or affect this image. Building on the work of Shannon and Weaver, Fairthorne, Brookes, and others, the author analyses the content of communication ‐‐ the message ‐‐ to consist of three elements: language, medium, and purpose.“This revised model of communication, of image alteration through the creation of graphic records, can serve as a framework for the delineation of the scope of both information science and librarianship”. But what motivates sources to create, and recipients to respond? Building principally on the work of Kenneth Boulding and his“grants economy”, Pratt usefully provides four motives for record creation: exchange/economic, integrative/altruism, coercion/fear, and personal/aesthetic ‐‐ and develops the instrumental‐intrinsic dichotomy of record use, which interestingly parallels the information service‐public library distinction, to produce a fourfold categorisation of use ‐‐ to motivate/change values, to articulate/describe, to educate/instruct, to felicate enjoy.

Using these categories, the author scorns our muddled thinking regarding“information”, information science, and librarianship. He is particularly hard on the tendency to commodify information (and presumably“knowledge” as well) as in“information management” (and“knowledge management”) ‐‐ what Fairthorne cuttingly called“The Phlogiston Theory of Information”.

Information science is a logical impossibility because information is a process in the mind, an event or change in our head, it is not a“thing” we can measure or quantify. We need to shift research towards why documents are created and how they are used. The shortcomings of existing statistical methods used in, for example, bibliometrics and use studies are noted and the author suggests more appropriate ones. This leads him (back!) to the humanities (”The librarian′s task is unscientific at its very core”) since we are dealing with records and their meanings and effects. Since information is not a commodity and hence not quantifiable, we have to revert to the more basic mission of libraries, the collection, preservation, organisation and distribution of data and graphic records.

The author′s analyses and extensions of communication theory, his critique of information science, and his forays into new models of librarianship are perceptive, acute, and exciting. They stimulate and promise much. In Part Two he turns from principles to practicalities and, sadly, the promise vanishes. He starts well enough, with a swingeing attack on the muddled thinking on goals, objectives, strategies and action, and his use of Douglas Raber′s categories of public library philosophies ‐‐ the social activist, the conservative, and the populist ‐‐ is well done. But now Pratt launches into new approaches to funding public libraries (outsourcing, sponsorship, and the non‐profit corporatist approach); the digital future; and common myths of librarianship. Much of what the author says is radical and stimulating, and may even be right, but after the calm, rational, and objective analysis of Part One, the second part appears as a jumble of populist“hot” topics thrown together to catch the eye.

I mentioned the lack of a publisher′s blurb to help us discover what the book was about; I also miss knowing more about the author. Where arguments stand or fall on their own logic, authorship is often better for being anonymous, but when we are presented with a number of controversial and contentious assertions without any obvious logical justification, we need to know what authority the author has for making them. What evidence or experience does the author have for saying we should abandon library instruction; or that“professional neutrality is pure myth”; that patrons should not be treated equally; that we should charge for fiction?“Librarians”, says the author,“are not important, politically, socially, or environmentally”. Who is this guy who would have me abandon self‐service and reader instruction in my reference library for a value‐added service providing answers to questions rather than encouraging users to do it themselves? Nice in theory, impossible in practice, as anyone with practical experience in public information work will surely testify.

Allen Pratt has really got me fired up! Maybe it is up to the reader to make his or her own connection between Pratt′s principles and his practicalities. As he says himself, in a belated justification in his short conclusion,“It is the librarian′s responsibility to be knowledgable about three things: (a) the nature of the ideas of primary interest to the users; (b) the nature of those sources that provide records pertinent to those ideas; and (c) the appropriate methods for control and distribution of those records”. The author makes good use of a wide range of sources from H. Putnam (1890) and J.C. Dana (1916) to KMPG/CPI (1995) and Stoll′s Silicon Snake Oil (1996). The book is a stimulating guide for students of LIS, and those practitioners still puzzling about what it is they do!