Book Reviews 501

social, political, and moral aspects of systems design. Many of the contributors give this neglect as the primary cause of system failure.

The final essay, by Richard Boland, best sums this up. He discusses the problems of providing information without “in-formation.” He argues that most IS research and practice ignores the prob- lem of meaning, assuming information to be structured data, objectives outside of humans, instead of being a change in the central nervous system. He presents five fantasies about information which trace the progressive removal of the human actor. Briefly, these are (1) information is structured data, (2) an organization is information, (3) information is power, (4) information is intelligence, and (5) information is perfectable. These all attempt to give substance to concepts that are not entities, and this removes the responsibility of engaging in dialogue in order to make sense of our world. Other papers argue, in different ways, that IS should be regarded not as technological systems in a social context, but as social systems that rely on new technologies for their operations. Technology should be concerned more with ends -improving the human condition-than with means-designing bet- ter machines.

On the other hand, several authors recognize the practical and theoretical difficulties in involving the end user in design. How and why humans seek and use information, the meaning they give to its output, and how they make decisions are poorly understood. Adding these considerations to already complex methods may increase research complexity to the point where nothing gets done.

All of the essays are well written and solidly based on research. Some are more readable and more interesting than others, but all are provocative. One comes away with two conflicting impres- sions: (1) it is encouraging to see this new emphasis on the human context of IS; but (2) it is disturb- ing to realize that a large and important subset of the information world (i.e., mediated, service-oriented, bibliographic-based systems) is not even thought to be part of the picture, yet librar- ians and information service professionals have and can provide much insight into that social and human context.

School of Information & Library Studies State University of New York at Buffalo Buffalo, NY

NED YERKEY

The Information Weapon: Winning Customers and Markets with Technology. W.R. SYNNOTT.

Wiley, New York (1987). xi + 334 pp., $29.95. ISBN 471-84557-4.

I began reading this book expecting it to deal with “information” in a traditional library sense of the word, that is, books, journals, computer databases, etc. Instead, it deals almost entirely with com- puter resources. Traditional “information” is mentioned only briefly in two places.

It has a limited audience consisting primarily of high-level business executives, executive data- processing managers, and MBA students. Unfortunately, most of the business executives who could profit from it will probably never read it. To quote from the book, “ . . . but getting the CEO and other top managers to spend the time necessary to learn about information technology and the infor- mation weapon . . . is difficult” (p. 318).

There are many intriguing examples of innovative uses of what Synnott calls “information tech- nology.” However, some of these examples are repeated several times. In fact, I felt that many of the ideas in the book, although they were interesting, were repeated too much and that the book could have been condensed into a much shorter publication. I did not find the book overly technical except in one section on communications.

Brooklyn College Library Brooklyn College Brooklyn, NY

BETTY MILLER

Libraries, Coalitions and the Public Good. E.J. JOSEY (ED.). Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York (1987). xiv + 174 pp., $29.95 (paperback). ISBN l-55570-017-9.

Few conference themes have raised more important issues or captured more professional attention than “Forging Coalitions for the Public Good,” the focus of E.J. Josey’s year as president of the American Library Association (ALA). Through a conference-within-a-conference at the January 1985 ALA Midwinter and the major addresses at ALA’s June 1985 meeting, Josey challenged librarians

IPM 24:4-I