reviews.indd


Schiller, Dan. How to Think about In-
formation. Urbana: University of Il-
linois Press, 2007. 267p. $35 (ISBN 
0252031326). LC 2006-011275. 

It would be almost impossible to imagine 
any book title whose fulfi llment could 
possibly be more different than just 
twenty years ago. The production, array, 
and consumption of information right 
now are enormously more complicated 
and confusing than they were then, and 
no one knows exactly in which directions 
these will go in the near and more distant 
future. Twenty years ago, “information” 
was more exiguous and certainly harder 
to come by, and often more effort was put 
into finding information than in digesting 
it. In contrast, today the problems begin 
with determining in which of numerous 
formats one wishes to have information 
brought to his or her attention. Even so, 
digesting is still an issue, and the ques-
tion is: does this encourage more or less 
careful interpretation of it? 

As befits a member of the School of 
Library and Information Science and the 
Institute of Communications Research 
at the University of Illinois, Dan Schiller 
operates at a rarefied level and does not 
really address the kinds of contexts with 
which librarians must grapple on a daily 
basis (“libraries” barely makes the index). 
Rather, he is concerned with, as he puts 
it, “information as a commodity.” Indeed, 
Schiller expresses his focus almost at once: 
“[h]ow, when and why does information 
become economically valuable?” In these 
circumstances, it is surprising that he 
fails to discuss one information-as-com-
modity issue of supreme consequence 
to libraries—the increasingly high costs 
of information (would that it were also 
always knowledge!) to both libraries and 
individuals. 

Instead, the present work is aimed at 
technocrats, macroeconomists, and others 
who are interested in developing abstract-
ed notions of information. Working librar-
ians, faced with an overwhelming tidal 
wave of both information and ways to 
gain access to it, will probably not fi nd it 

Book Reviews 367 

possible to “think” about this information 
beyond trying their best to ensure that the 
most and the best of it reaches the user. 
And then, of course, the users themselves 
will need to learn how to domesticate this 
mass in whatever ways appear to suit 
their particular purposes best. 

Nor does Schiller spend any time ru-
minating about another, admitt edly only 
epistemological, concern—the eff ects of 
the information explosion on our ability 
to comprehend, in both senses, the results. 
One concept that will perish as a result of 
these new sets of circumstances is the very 
notion of “definitiveness.” With informa-
tion now changing kaleidoscopically, and 
being measured in terabytes (one terabyte 
equals 1,000,000,000,000 bytes), and with 
our individual and collective gray matter 
continuing blithely along imperceptible 
evolutionary paths, it will soon become 
impossible—if it isn’t already—to capture 
the totality of even the thinnest slice of 
the universe of information. Like astrono-
mers who, while developing newer and 
better instruments, recognize that they 
are falling behind the curve, librarians 
increasingly are finding themselves able 
to provide more in absolute terms but less 
in relative terms, and there seems no way 
out of this impasse. 

In sum, while most libraries should 
have a copy of How to Think about Informa-
tion, there seems to be no pressing reasons 
why librarians need to assimilate its argu-
ments for themselves, given all the other 
concerns that coping with “information” 
now puts on the table—David Henige, 
University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Stueart, Robert D. International Librarian-
ship: A Basic Guide to Global Knowledge 
Access. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow (Li-
braries and Librarianship: An Interna-
tional Perspective, No. 2), 2007. 247p. 
alk. paper, $45 (ISBN 0810858762).
LC 2006-22209. 

Robert D. Stueart’s International Librarian-
ship: A Basic Guide to Global Knowledge 
Access is the second in an ambitious series 
entitled Libraries and Librarianship: An