reviews Book Reviews 581 the promise of radio and television before them, can and probably will be compromised and controlled by com- mercial forces, if only because indi- viduals and local groups cannot afford to maintain the whiz-bang, high-pro- duction-value presentations we have come to expect. Ultimately, Doheny-Farina coun- sels community activism and touts “Neigh-Nets,” “the next step beyond the Free-Net in the evolution of com- munity nets.” The Neigh-Net can be used to welcome new neighbors, mar- k e t b a b y - s i t t i n g s e r v i c e s , s u p p o r t neighborhood businesses, publicize local events, and “debate local issues, from taxes to traffic to crime to poli- tics.” Throughout his book, Doheny-Fa- rina, an associate professor at Clarkson University, contrasts the cold and somewhat culturally barren char- acter of his home with the seductive, but ultimately evil, bright lights of the big city, and by analogy, contrasts the down-to-earth community activism he counsels with the seductive, but ulti- mately misguided, desire to flee the provinces for the big city. He prizes his hard-fought achievement in becoming a part of his environment and coun- sels others to do the same. “The net . . . is a seductive electronic specter. Take part in it not to connect to the world but to connect to your city, your town, your neighborhood.”—William Miller, Florida Atlantic University. Megill, Kenneth. The Corporate Memory: Information Management in the Elec- tronic Age. London: Bowker-Saur (In- formation Services Management, 6), 1997. 112p. $50, alk. paper (ISBN 1- 85739-158-6). LC 96-43103. This is a slight volume with a large scope. In a mere one hundred and twelve pages, Kenneth Megill summa- rizes the contributions of the three in- terrelated fields of records manage- ment, special librarianship, and ar- chives to the management of corporate information systems; and he charts a new course for information systems in the face of shifting technological and managerial patterns. Megill, director of the Information Resources Manage- ment Program within the School of Li- brary and Information Science at Catholic University, begins with two basic premises: (1) The advent of elec- tronic data systems is radically chang- ing the way information is used by cor- porations, and (2) changes from within and without corporations require new ways of maintaining the information that makes up corporate memories. These new ways involve an integration of activities currently divided among records managers, archivists, librar- ians, and computer personnel. Megill argues that traditional paper systems are giving way to online systems with shared databases. The role of the cor- porate memory manager will be to iden- tify appropriate data, make them avail- able through networks, and provide indexes and search mechanisms. In- stead of historical files in one central- ized location, there will be historical data residing alongside newly generated data in an ongoing and online system. The concept of corporate memory is defined as the active and historical infor- mation in an organization that is worth sharing, managing, and preserving for later reuse. Traditionally, this information has resided in the experiences and knowl- edge of individual employees or in the thousands of documents produced in the course of business. Megill argues that the development of computer networks and shared databases, the increased recog- nition of information as a commodity, and shifting employment patterns have long- term repercussions for the field of infor- mation management. Further, the nature of corporate structures is undergoing a fundamental change, moving away from top-down hierarchies. In particular, he 582 College & Research Libraries November 1997 rate structure); bringing search engines to current stored electronic data; creat- ing systems to capture and index elec- tronic documents; and developing im- aging systems. These suggestions are indeed useful starting points, but the descriptions are insufficient as guide- lines for planning their implementation. Ultimately, the usefulness of this work will be in its presentation of current is- sues and the accessibility of Megill’s ar- guments for rethinking corporate records issues. It is particularly appropriate for records managers, archivists, and librar- ians faced with persuading information- illiterate corporate or institutional person- nel to change or implement records poli- cies.—Jan Blodgett, Davidson College. Sardar, Ziauddin, and Jerome R. Ravetz. Cyberfutures: Culture and Politics on the Information Superhighway. New York: New York Univ. Pr., 1996. 161p. $45, cloth (ISBN 0-8147-8059-8); $16.95, pa- per (ISBN 0-8147-8058-X). LC 96- 19794. Rising from academic obscurity in the space of just a few years, the Internet is fast becoming a public information system of global proportions. That this has occurred rather rapidly is an un- derstatement; it is as if “the telephone, television, and the private automobile had all developed simultaneously, and in a matter of months rather than de- cades.” We must ask how this new tech- nology will affect culture and society in the years to come, but it is an arduous task, the editors claim. In fact, accord- ing to the editors, in the grip of Internet technological enthusiasm and hype, it is all but impossible to come to any sen- sible conclusions about the Internet’s future—the volume’s ostensible topic. So the editors abandon this project at the beginning, preferring, instead, to unpack the “underlying assumptions and values of the cyberspace revolu- tion that is unfolding before our eyes.” They offer this collection of essays to sees the role of middle managers mov- ing away from controlling or limiting in- formation and toward coordinating and adding value. The strength of this book lies in its clear synthesis of records management issues and descriptions of technological changes in the workplace. Included are discussions on records retention policies; analysis of information use; explanations of relational and inverted index systems, SGML, the Internet and the World Wide Web, and scripts; and descriptions of train- ing programs. Although Megill openly acknowledges that portions of the book are based on Carlos A. Cuadra’s The Cor- porate Memory and the Bottom Line (1994) and a paper presented by Judith Wanger at the Online Conference in 1995, he also provides an excellent summary of a wide range of recent research. Moreover, he presents cogent arguments for an inte- grated approach to documentation while acknowledging the contributions already made by the separate disciplines of records management, archives, and li- brary science. However, the concept of documentation strategy used here relies more on standard records retention ap- praisals than on the perspective of archi- val documentation outlined in Helen Samuels’s Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern Colleges and Universities (1992). An- notated bibliographies at the end of each chapter offer practical pointers to more detailed histories and analyses, and high- lighted sections give easy access to sta- tistics on the costs of lost documents and to useful summaries of records concepts. The weakest points of the book are the attempts to provide practical guid- ance in appraisal and in starting corpo- rate memory programs. The discussion of rules of worth remains at the level of an overview and is too conditional to truly assist in the design of viable re- tention periods. 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