A History of Information Storage and Retrieval

Citation

Vickery, B. (2002), "A History of Information Storage and Retrieval", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 285-287. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.36.4.285.5

The theme of this book, as stated in the preface, is “to survey some of the ways humans have preserved their knowledge”. Of the 20 chapters, nine are devoted, one way or another, to encyclopedias. The history of general encyclopedias, from early Roman times to today, is told in a very readable way in these chapters. Unusual is an early chapter on Chinese and medieval Arab encyclopedias. Particular attention is paid to the great French Encyclopédie, the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, and the Britannica. Biographical accounts are given of three people connected to the idea of encyclopedic knowledge – Francis Bacon, Diderot and Coleridge. There are only a couple of paragraphs on special encyclopedias. This aspect of the book ends with some notes on general encyclopedias on CD‐ROM. There are in addition three rather slighter chapters on the development of libraries.

Interspersed with this material there are: an introductory chapter on knowledge in preliterate societies; two chapters on the psychology of thinking and learning; and an ideological essay on the uses and abuses of the Bible. The book concludes with two chapters on the computer handling of information.

As the preface promised, the material is overwhelmingly about information storage and preservation. There are half a dozen pages or so on retrieval: classification and alphabetical arrangement, hypertext and WWW search engines.

Even with respect to encyclopedias, there is nothing on their structure to match McArthur’s (1986) illuminating survey, which is not in the bibliography.

The book is therefore something of a pot pourri, but written with evident knowledge of and enthusiasm for the subjects it covers. Clearly, it is unlikely to have direct relevance for many readers of Program, but I would certainly recommend it as supplementary reading for library and information studies.