Information Science in Theory and Practice (third revised and enlarged edition)

This is the third edition of a book originally published by Butterworth in 1987. The earlier editions were regarded as very much the seminal text for the concept of information science associated with Vickery himself, with B.C. Brookes, and with others who might be described as the “London School”. This latest edition has had a relatively modest updating, and no major restructuring, so that it can hardly stand as a modern textbook for the field. Rather, it remains a lucid and thorough statement of one perspective on the information sciences, which had, and continues to have, a very significant influence on developments.

Although the book bears the names of its original two authors, a sad part of the preface notes the death of Alina Vickery in 2001.

The chapter structure is still very largely that of the original 1987 edition. Chapters deal successively with: the emergence and scope of information science; a social approach to information; wider context of information transfer, including information transfer in the natural world, and at the genetic level; people and information; information retrieval; semantics and retrieval; intermediaries and interfaces; information systems; and evaluation of retrieval systems.

This is very clearly a systems‐centred approach, and elements of information seeking, and the cognitive approach, receive little coverage. Despite the identification of information science with “the study of the communication of information in society”, there is a stronger emphasis on laboratory‐style investigations than on more qualitative and sociological studies. The references in the main bibliography have been selectively updated to 2003, but most date from earlier years.

The main change in this edition has been the replacement of the tenth chapter, dealing with information in society, with a chapter on the internet and information science. In fact, this deals with a number of issues besides the internet, including everyday life information seeking, and the development of “hybrid” information services, involving provision of both printed and digital materials. Some new material is added in appendices, and a collection of “supplementary materials on information science” – essentially an unannotated bibliography of materials mainly recent, which are not mentioned elsewhere in the book – is included.

This book deserves a place on the shelf of those who teach and practice scholarship in the information sciences, as it provides an account – at times personal and idiosyncratic – of the nature of the subject by an author who made great contributions its development. It can rightly continue to be regarded as a classic. It should also be of value to researchers, who may well find inspiration and new ideas from the wealth of detailed examples and commentary presented.