College and Research Libraries 570 College & Research Libraries toriens). They do inspire the reader to set aside the book and muse, although per- haps not come to any conclusions. If you find the content of The Order of Books elusive and its style opaque, you are not alone.-Elizabeth Swaim, Wesleyan Uni- versity, Middletown, Conn. Graham, Gordon. As I Was Saying: Es- says on the International Book Business. London: Hans Zell, 1994 (distr. in the United States by Reed Reference Pub- lishing). 255p. $28 (ISBN 1-87383- 601-1). This volume gathers together the idi- osyncratic essays of Gordon Graham, a prominent figure in the Anglo-American publishing community for over four decades, having played leading roles at McGraw-Hill and Butterworths. Al- though no bibliography is presented, the book cover describes the essays as the "distillation and updating" of Graham's "articles and speeches." The author re- veals in his foreword only that "some of the source material" for the collection has been previously published in venues such as Publishers Weekly and The Book- seller. He suggests that what he has done here is to reconsider his earlier writings, to engage in an "exercise in distillation" and in "third thoughts" on previously visited themes. In an admission typical of Graham's blend of blunt honesty, irony, glibness, and often frustrating contradictions, he admits impishly that he has not sought permission to have these essays republished. Yet he never reveals whether it was necessary to seek such permission, and we are never sure if anything here had, in fact, been pre- viously published. Given that much of this book focuses on questions of copy- right and publishing practice, this minor point of confusion is a forewarning of slippery footing ahead. The format of the collection is not con- ducive to a clear view into the world of publishing. The chapters are thematic, with no evident overarching organiza- tion or line of development. The themes range from broad topics such as "nation- alism and publishing" and "the electronic manifestation" (electronic publishing) to elements of the book publishing system November 1994 such as "librarians," "booksellers," and "authors," and to practical matters such as "prices" and "missions and fairs." The diversity does not end there. The essays and mini-essays making up each chapter are not titled; rather, they are each preceded by a location and date, which the author tells us, curiously, are there to remind the reader that the topics are "timeless and placeless, but that there are occasions when one must at- tempt snapshots." Sometimes the places and dates fix an experience; sometimes they have little intrinsic relationship to what is being presented. And there is more. The chapters end with self-con- scious "interludes"-set off in italics- that Graham inserts to "make sure that neither the author nor the readers take themselves or their work too seriously or too narrowly." These range from hu- morous to puffy, while on the whole adding another element of disruption to a generally disjointed set of texts. Despite the many twists and turns in As I Was Saying, one theme seems con- tinually to underpin the author's convic- tions, even if it is not always capable of linking up his essays: the notion that publishers, booksellers, librarians, and authors work in interdependent com- munities. A corollary that pops up in Graham's wry observations is that many of the problems separating these com- munities might be solved to some de- gree if they recognized their common causes and communicated more often in terms of their mutual interests. Readers of College & Research Libraries will be in- terested in seeing this theme presented most forcefully in the chapter devoted to librarians. Indeed, the theme of this chapter is really the interdependence of publishers, booksellers, librarians, and authors within . the book world, rather than librarians or librarianship. Gra- ham's remarks on topics such as bibliog- raphies and bibliographic publishing in this chapter (in the essay under "Stock- holm 1990") are superficial and mislead- ing. Librarians are advised to resist the urge to read about themselves. A more useful strategy for reading the book is k search out the many stimulating re- marks, scattered passim, on copyright and electronic publishing. For the academic librarian, the strength of Graham's essays lies in the insight they offer into the rationales and practices that govern management of the publishing business. He approaches these subjects with a mixture of frankness, informality, and sagacity that pushes the reader in in- teresting directions. Still, As I Was Saying fails to lead beyond observations miscel- laneously presented, and Graham ne- glects to link his ideas with arguments capable of clarifying and deepening our understanding of the dynamics of contem- porary publishing.-Henry Lowood, Stan- ford University, Stanford, California. Vickery, Brian C., and Alina Vickery. Information Science in Theory and Prac- tice. 2d ed. New York: Bowker-Saur, 1992. 387p. $95 (ISBN 0-408-10684-0). Despite the promise of the title, this volume is concerned with a broad treat- ment of the essential scientific aspects of information science rather than its prac- tice per se. In their preface the authors call it 11 an attempt to present and discuss a scientific understanding of the proc- esses of information transfer ... [as] a human, social activity .... "As such, it covers a wide range of topics in informa- tion science, but in the context of estab- lished research and not contemporary practice. Its ten chapters deal with three broad categories: information transfer in the wider societal context, information and the individual, and the nature of information systems. Rather than inte- grating disparate studies from fields such as anthropology, psychology, and computer science, the authors focus on more applied aspects of these fields in the formal study of information. This book can rightly claim to be a II core" text on information science as a distinct dis- cipline, not an integration of informa- tion science with these disciplines. Specifically, the authors address the nature of information from the funda- mental exchange of information at the microbial level (including an amusingly disgressive discussion of the reproduc- tion of a bacteriophage that illustrates Book Reviews 571 communication in nature) to the nature of language, logic, basic forms of infor- mation, and the personal semantic expe- rience of information retrieval. This presentation is quickly incorporated into the context of the information sys- tem, with the text as the fundamental type of information considered and tra- ditional publication and libraries as the primary sites of dissemination. Some topics, such as the implications of lin- guistics, necessarily are dealt with su- perficially to allow larger themes to emerge. While the authors discuss elec- tronic interfaces, systems, and data- bases, it is in the context of a much broader understanding of human infor- mation processing and systems. The Vickerys artfully integrate there- sults of hundreds of studies into this broad sketch, providing the reader with both concise summaries of the core re- search in various areas as well as point- ers for further reference and study. At the same time, the omission of the con- text of practice and of an integration of contemporary issues that are rapidly changing the nature of the field may limit the value of this otherwise excel- lent book. To a degree, the authors ac- knowledge this problem, but the work suffers nevertheless from its failure to incorporate the human experiences of recent innovations in technology and their implications for both theory and practice. They tend to rely on older ex- amples of particular technologies, such as MYCIN, an expert system of the 1970s, rather than the many online, CD- ROM, and network-based resources that are now much more familiar. This book is expertly written with a long-term perspective, encapsulating well-established research dating from the emergence of the modern disci- pline of information science in the postwar era to some developments up through the mid-80s. The erudition and experience of the Vickerys are manifest in both the selection of their topics and the formal, polished style with which they are presented. The book skillfully combines the subject areas of traditional library science