Interesting, but I'm not sure why I needed to know 3/4 of it. My favorite bits were about Ted Nelson and hypertext.

I enjoy nicely designed book covers, although a poorly designed cover doesn't detract from a good book. That said, I really dislike Glut's cover. ( )

"To counter the “billions of pixels” that have been spent on the rise of the seemingly unique World Wide Web, journalist and information architect Wright delivers a fascinating tour of the many ways that humans have collected, organized, and shared information for “more than 100,000 years” to show how the information age started long before microchips or movable type."

Publishers Weekly, Joseph Henry ( )

Slow start but worth sticking with. Took awhile to get throught but I'm glad I did. ( )

Wright presents an interesting narrative, blending ideas from a range of disciplines. On the one hand, it's a smooth overview of the development of information management -- mainly from a library science viewpoint. On the other hand, some nicely evocative connections to spur further thought. Organized chronologically, the book seems weakest in regard to modern and future trends. ( )

From folk categorization to internet design. A gem of a book. ( )

Wright's beautifully written book, Glut is the right book for you. Among other things, this book is a deeper exploration of the rich history of traditional information revolutions and how networks and hierarchies have co-existed for millennia mutually shaping each other. As Wright notes, the contributions of librarians from Callimachus (Library of Alexandria) in the 3rd Century BC to Cutter and Dewey in the 19th Century to Paul Otlet (the Mundaneum) and Eugene Garfield (precursor of bibliometrics and page ranking), in the 20th century A.D. to the present information organisation systems including the web has been phenomenon. The stories are fascinating.

Central to Wright's discussion is the role of libraries and librarians who contributed greatly such as Paul Otlet, who as Wright persuasively argues, envisioned today's web in the 1930's, well before Vannavar Bush. Wright discusses in great detail how Otlet's contributions could be on par with that of Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson, all forbearers to Tim Berners-Lee's web. Important in this regard is the part of the discussion in the book on how Otlet came to conclude that catalogues and indexes available at the time could only guide the reader "as far as the individual book" but not to the relationship of the contents in other books; then Otlet saw the possibility of creating semantic links between documents (the "réseau").

The book is an important read for information architects, librarians and anyone interested about the web. It main contention is that hierarchies (traditional information organisation systems such as taxonomies) vis-à-vis networks (traditional tribal folk-categorisation systems and today's folksonomies) are not in opposition. Instead, as Wright argues, they complement each other. I think it is an interesting balance between ontologies and web 2.0 approaches. ( )

A must-read for every LIS student and librarian; Wright provides a concise but still thorough overview of information and its organization, pointing to the roots of our current digital-driven era in the the libraries of Alexandria and the Renaissance. These are critical foundations that need to be explored and discussed. ( )

Didn't like the book.. ( )

Seems to me to be a mirror of Matthew Battle's "Library: An Unquiet History." Perhaps not the right time to be reading - and perhaps an unfair assessment after only 50 pages, but I'm returning it unread to the stacks.

This is the "pop" version of information history, written by someone who read maybe one book on each topic he would cover, and generally not a scholarly book at that. There are much better works on information throughout history, and on the history of books and libraries. This might be ok if it's your first read in this area, but be forewarned that there are errors and shortcuts that more scholarly works will straighten out for you. ( )

From Kenneth, 2008