Information Management

Middleton, Michael. Information Management: a consolidation of operations analysis and strategy. Wagga Wagga: CIS, 2002. ISBN 1 876938 36 6

Information management is a concept common to a number of disciplines. Practitioners in areas as varied as records management, archives, strategic planning, libraries and knowledge management all have views and indeed textbooks giving a particular viewpoint. This book is unusual in that it tries to synthesise and bring together these various viewpoints and needs and consolidate them into a common framework at operational strategic and analytical levels Middleton teaches information management at Queensland University of Technology and the book is marketed as a general introduction to the field. And it does indeed make an excellent textbook. It is clearly written and Middleton is as comfortable describing XML as the MARC format, Bradford’s Law or KWOC indexes. Almost inevitably this means that the material is divide into bite-sized chunks suitable for students with no real sense of narrative flow.

It is divided into four sections: an overview; a discussion of operational information management; analytical aspects; administrative aspects. In the first section Middleton contends that the scope of information management remains poorly defined and so attempts to define the people who work in the field, their research studies area and the organisations in which information is managed. Much of this is done through lists, tables and bullet points, which provide some clarity albeit at the price of readability. The second section concentrates on operational information management, considering principally information about information in the processes described. It begins with an excellent pithy history of the communication of information in different cultures, then sweeps through everything from form design and UNICODE to news group listings and eventually moves on to information retrieval. This section lies at the heart of the book and occupies half of the space. It is sweeping and impressive in its coverage and in the ability to compress a vast range of information into manageable proportion. A much shorter section follows on user needs analysis and on information evaluation and analysis. A final short section considers administering information and some of the general social and political context.

The book is badly let down by its poorly reproduced illustrations, ranging from the Rosetta Stone to indecipherable web pages. There are very useful lists of further reading at the end of each chapter, on-line exercises and a comprehensive bibliography to round off a solid piece of work. That major caveat regarding illustration apart, the book is a chunky and worthy textbook for beginners and a useful reference book for practitioners. It can certainly be recommended, not least to those with muscular physiques and large purses.