Understanding Information

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2003), "Understanding Information", Library Review, Vol. 52 No. 1, pp. 46-46. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530310457068

Put “understanding” and “information” together thesaurally and you expect high recall and get it. Other books have had this title, others aspired to capture – in a clear quintessential wholly accessible way – what it is like to start at the very beginning. Only writers who have gone through the lot have the credentials to write such introductions, and readers will approach such titles with a mix of pragmatism and blasé scepticism – the first because such books will always be useful for students (this book is “a starting point for people who wish to explore the world of information further”) and the second because it has all been done, or seems to have been, before. Understanding Information comes through these various “tests” very well. It is clearly an introduction for beginners, such as students on information courses and trainees early on in their training, and, given the Saur stable (known for its international information/bibliographical publications), a work of particular use for students and trainees whose first language is not English but who want both to familiarize themselves with the ideas and concepts and with expressing them.

It starts with data, facts, things, bits, signals, sounds, words, and how we perceive and communicate and interpret them. We select for information when we read and process information. This involves classification, and libraries and computers are good at this, storage (human and computer memory), and retrieval (libraries, databases, text and images, overload). It relies on communication (groups and networks, diffusion and media). When all this is coherent and self‐aware it becomes knowledge, not just of rational decisions in organizations, but emotions and creativity, a domain where consciousness and intelligence apply. Suitably we end with wisdom. Some journey. No surprises but a sure‐footed trip from the parts to the wholes, emblematically shaping the reader’s own experience of the book, which itself moves in the same direction.

Meadows is professor of library and information studies at Loughborough University and, over the years, has produced works on information research, the communication of science, and publishing. His experience at explaining things to students shows through, touching lightly on complex subjects like disorder, neural networks, image retrieval, cataloguing, databases, and IQ, some would say simplistically too lightly (but ask yourself what the book is “for” – beginners in the field). The familiar challenge of explaining complexities sometimes loses itself in analogy (the map metaphor for knowledge is merely confusing) but it holds itself together under scrutiny and acquits itself well. A useful helpful introductory text, then, for students and novices, with that tantalizing fascination for expert readers of another expert getting things unpatronisingly right. Olympians need not apply. Only the hardback available currently, which is a pity – money could be made by Saur in having an inexpensive paperback for students, where it would go onto many pre‐course reading lists.