Book review: COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK: A BOOK OF READINGS ed. by Irene GreiI (Morgan Kaufmann, 1988)

This book has selectively collected 28 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) papers from journals including the IEEE Computer, Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, Human Computer Interaction, American Psychologist, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, AI Magazine, Scientific American, Atlantic Monthly, TOOIS, and CACM. From the list of publications, it can be seen that not only does CSCW borrow from varied fields, but that this text will be of value to CSCW for consolidating the information and also to the various fields with which it overlaps. The papers, ranging in date from 1945 to 1988 and written by many notable authors including Douglas C. Engelbart, Alphonse Chapanis, Thomas Malone, Jeff Conklin, Kevin Crowston, Sara Kiesler, and Terry Winograd, build upon each others' arguments with many of the latest papers referencing earlier works. The editor, Irene Greif, has included two of her own papers (coauthored with Sunil Sarin): "Computer-based Real-Time Conferencing Systems" and "Data Sharing in Groups Work." She also provides excellent commentary on how the papers relate to each other and build on the field of CSCW.