Table of contents: issue59

Book Review: Making Digital Cultures - Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Lina Coelho finds this study of the cultural terrain of modern institutions, where digital and analogue objects co-exist, both challenging and thought-provoking.

This book is about cultural continuity and change. It focuses on the debates about the impact of 'new technology' and 'the digital age' on the shaping of cultural spaces, the discourses between 'producers' and 'consumers' and the changing fabric of modern institutions. The effects of various digitisation endeavours on institutional identities and practices and on individual behaviours are analysed in order to demonstrate how digital technologies are 'enfolded into the fabric of specific institutional and broader cultural environments.'

Book Review: Managing Electronic Government Information in Libraries

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Sylvie Lafortune reviews a book which addresses the following question: From e-government to t-government. How will libraries keep up?

Today, most governments in developing countries provide essential services and information to their citizens exclusively via the World Wide Web. The benefit of this new means of dissemination is that information is current, available 24/7 and for the most part, downloadable. The downside of this model is that government Web pages are unstable and not always well designed, often making information difficult to locate. This new 'digital government information environment' poses a myriad of challenges which this book addresses.

Book Review: Reader Development in Practice

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Abigail Luthmann examines a varied collection of approaches to the topic of reader development.

This book spans a wide-ranging approach to reader development, including contributions from an author, a poet, a bookseller, academics, librarians, literature development workers and a not-otherwise-affiliated reading group member.

It certainly provides a decent overview of the very different ways individuals engage with literature, some very relevant to public library practice (my field), others of more abstract interest, and some perhaps less relevant.

The book is formed in five themed sections and I shall examine each of them in turn.

Book Review: Sketching Tomorrow - The Social Dynamics of Information and Communication Technology

editor — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Emma Tonkin takes a look at an ambitious work on the relationship of modern society to information and communication technologies and observes more sins of omission than commission.

In the introduction to this 227-page work [1], editors Eugene Loos, Enid Mante-Meijer and Leslie Haddon provide a concise history of the organisation underlying the research area - the social dynamics of information and communication technology, or ICT to those on first-name terms - and the political stance that called it into being. The European Commission and national governments, it seems, are of the opinion that information and communication technologies as a whole can be seen as enablers for the furtherance of democratic society.