Reviews

摘要

Records, recordkeeping, and archives all have been tied up with technology from the moment documentary forms appeared in the ancient world. In recent decades, the relationship of technology to archiving has been portrayed as more of an adversarial one, as predictions about a coming digital dark age have been prevalent. The two new books reviewed show another way of examining technology and records. The Nicholas and Rowlands book on digital consumers suggests we examine how information-seeking behaviour is changing and then apply what we have learned to the missions and tasks of the information professions represented by archivists and librarians. Ian Batterham's book on office copying gives us a handsome practical volume on identifying and preserving documents produced by the ever-changing office copying of the past century and a half up to the time of the advent of personal computers. One book picks up where the other ends, even though their purposes are quite different.