Trends, Discovery, and People in the Digital Age is a text that draws together a range of international information managers and professionals to discuss the patterns and emerging trends of information discovery in an ever evolving digital age.
The book is the first installment of Chandos' Digital Information Review series which “aims to be a summary and a summation of the key themes, advances and trends in all aspects of digital information and explores the impact on the information world”. The series editors are David Baker, who is Emeritus Professor of Strategic Information Management at University College Plymouth St Mark & St John (UK), and Wendy Evans, who is Head of Library at the same institution. There are 22 contributing authors to the 17 chapters, drawing from their knowledge and experience as educators and academics, librarians/information managers, finance, business and public sector professionals. The different disciplines and professions provide a multi-faceted and reflective analysis of the rapidly changing digital information world. Topics include usability, user search behaviour, digital discovery, online reference, e-learning, open access, e-book and e-journal trends, digital modelling for urban planning, digital and data curation, cloud computing and strategic development/planning initiatives.
The introductory chapter by the editors summarises the major themes and issues, highlighting the challenges and successes contained within the authors' contributions. It illuminates the changing technological environment, the changing roles for librarians and a new information environment paradigm where the user has succeeded the provider ostensibly in control of content. Various individual chapters address a range of topics and typically cover a range of sub-topics as well as broader contexts (e.g. technological, policy, organisational). Some articles appear to have an audience of fellow academics and IT or business professionals, rather than specifically information managers. However this can be seen as a strength to better equip information professionals, through exposing them to other viewpoints and broader patterns of user behaviour, experience and activity.
Some articles are stronger than others, although that is a somewhat subjective assertion based on a professional's specialities and interest areas. Notable chapters address usability of the digital information environment, user behaviour of cohorts (e.g. patterns in discipline research habits), the national online reference service Enquire, growing open access and the data/digital curation that will increasingly be part of a librarian's work. With a book that is by nature contemplative and speculative, there are cries of the death of libraries and the demise of librarianship as a profession. These claims can be taken with appropriate scrutiny, alongside the important observation that change in digital information environments is fast-paced and persistent, and that is a factor which makes even some content from chapters in a book published at the beginning of 2013 a little dated.