Understanding Information Policy: : Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, 22‐24 July 1996

Citation

Gorman, G.E. (1999), "Understanding Information Policy: : Proceedings of a Workshop Held at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, 22‐24 July 1996", Asian Libraries, Vol. 8 No. 11, pp. 447-448. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1999.8.11.447.11

At the beginning of the 1990s information policy became a pressing issue in many countries, with the formulation of such policies being discussed from Singapore to London, from Stockholm to Wellington. By the mid‐1990s the issue had become so widespread that it was possible to call a workshop/conference to discuss the most pressing aspects of policy formulation and content. At the end of the 1990s we are not much further ahead, so one wonders whether this has been a case of much smoke signifying nothing more than smoke.

This volume reports the proceedings and individual papers at a workshop organised by the Information Policy Unit at City University in 1996. Aside from a general overview by the editor ‐ and a very good overview it is ‐ and a pair of concluding papers, the collection is organised in three parts, covering information policy concepts, national and international perspectives, organisational perspectives. The five papers devoted to policy concepts are among the most interesting in the collection, covering the main concepts and theoretical frameworks, policy research, information vs knowledge policy.

Within the national and international perspectives section the most notable contribution is Nick Moore’s piece on types of policies, one which I have used to great effect in policy discussions in several developing countries. The other papers in this section are pretty dull stuff, with the possible exception of Tamara Eisenschitz’s paper on the legal and regulatory frameworks, which covers patents, copyright and use rights in particular. The six papers in the organisational perspectives section are focused too specifically on individual cases (e.g. the NHS) or lack the breadth of perspective to make them interesting (e.g. policy evaluation in a multinational organisation). Unless one is specifically interested in a topic covered in these papers, this section makes for tedious reading indeed.

Michael Hills’ summary and reflections on the workshop, followed by the brief “directions for further research” overview conclude the collection, which has a very useful bibliography which my policy research students use as a starting point for their own investigations. The indexing is quite adequate, and overall the work should stand up to sustained reference use. It is unlikely that anyone will want to read the work from cover to cover because of the unevenness of content. At the same time, however, some of the papers will be consulted numerous times by the specialist readers at whom the collection is aimed.

Any library serving users with a particular interest in information policy will find this a worthwhile, but uneven, work on the topic. We await the definitive work on information policy, which this collection clearly is not.