Fundamentals of Information Studies: Understanding Information and Its Environment

Lester, June and Wallace C. Koehler, Jr. Fundamentals of Information Studies: Understanding Information and Its Environment. 2nd Edition. New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2007. 444 pp. 65.00 USD. ISBN-13: 978-1-55570-594-7. 8 We live in the information age, but what information is, how it is created and used is only beginning to be explored in earnest. This exploration is generating new subdisciplines, with theories, methods and applications. How then do we attempt to tie up all this activity with a bow and present it comprehensibly to our students? This is the ambitious task that Lester and Koehler have attempted with Fundamentals of Information Studies, now in its second edition. The scope of this survey work is broad as surmised from the six LC subject headings attached to the work, covering the science of information, information in society, information resources, services, technology and policy. Not surprisingly, the text itself spans fourteen chapters and over 400 pages. It includes a detailed table of contents, index and glossaries of terms and acronyms. Each chapter includes a reference list, and additional helpful resource lists. These references and resource lists are by necessity representative and the authors do not state why they include certain works and not others. For those familiar with the previous edition, there are several additions. There is a new chapter on information needs and information seeking behaviour and a chapter on analyzing power and information. Aids to teaching have also been added to each chapter as "learning guide" and "information idea" components. We are told that this is intended to be an introductory textbook for undergraduate and graduate information courses thus accounting for the layout of the chapters. The new learning guides introduce key ideas and learning outcomes for each chapter. Most of these outcomes relate to foundational knowledge (understand, define, identify) and only a few relate to application (analyze, assess). There are discussion questions at the end of each chapter that do encourage reflection and synthesis. I found the style of writing to be accessible and the book itself was a relatively quick read. The authors stated that they attempt to trace several themes throughout the book but identified the most prominent as the "impact of the development of technology on the access and use of information" (p. xv). Other themes which surface later are information as commodity and information authorship. I did find that technology issues loomed large and even when dealing with interpersonal information or policy, a discussion about technological influences was rarely more than a page away. At times I found the chapter divisions in the book to be somewhat arbitrary. For instance, I found it baffling that the printing press would merit only a sentence in "History of Information Technology" (Chapter 4) but received detailed coverage in the chapter on "Societal Institutions" (Chapter 6). In social science survey texts it can be difficult to separate concepts into distinct topics resulting in overlap and repetition. This was the case here. The instructor will need to note the interconnections within these chapters lest the student be left thinking "didn't we already cover this? " Although I commend the authors for including the new chapter on "Information Needs and Information Seeking Behaviour" (Chapter 3), I found it somewhat thin. The authors introduce several key figures in the field, but I felt they failed to present a clear overview of the field's history, theories and directions before departing into a discussion of information organization. …