Information Representation and Retrieval in the Digital Age (review)

The research questions posed by the authors are meaningful and critical and are properly answered. The introduction and summary chapters give readers a big picture view of the systems, and together comprise a must-read for busy readers, while other chapters can be used as an encyclopedia to get detailed information about a particular system or development. Sidebar text boxes are used throughout to highlight milestones that help readers to understand the unique contributions of those early information systems. For example, “The Library/USA demonstration may have been the first online search system to demonstrate inverted file searching.” (p. 50) However, some of the text boxes highlight more trivial matters—for example, “DIALOG was the first online search service to advertise in journal publications.” (p. 282) These milestones or “firsts” are summarized also at the end of the book and are arranged by date. This work can be read from cover to cover to gain a complete understanding of the early online information systems, or it can be used as a reference resource to look for description of a particular system. The large bibliography provides a rich resource for further reading. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in learning the history of online information systems and for library and information science collections.