(Press-News.org) A new book co-edited by Professor Emeritus Alistair Black and Associate Professor Bonnie Mak (School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Toni Weller (De Montfort University), and Laura Skouvig (University of Copenhagen) provides a field-defining, comprehensive study of information history. The Routledge Handbook of Information History, released last month by Routledge, examines how society, politics, culture, and technology have shaped information practices over millennia. The 638-page volume features more than forty contributors from around the world.
Black and Mak each contributed a chapter in the book and jointly authored the opening chapter which tracks the emergence and development of the field of information history. Black's chapter looks at information management in Britain's Inter-Service Topographical Department during World War II. The book's afterword authored by Mak explains how an analysis of information's past offers surprising insights about humanity.
"Now, more than ever, it is important to understand the ways in which 'information' was conceived and practiced across time and cultures," said Black and Mak in a joint statement. "A broader perspective on information and all its technologies can shed light on emerging developments in generative artificial intelligence, as well as its consequences for society. Although history is often understood as being about 'the past,' this volume demonstrates that history is also about our present and future."
Other contributors from the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois include Assistant Professor Zoe LeBlanc, who authored a chapter on decolonization and information in postcolonial Egypt, and Julia Pollack (MSLIS '12), creative program manager at the University of Illinois' Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, who designed the book's cover.
Black is the author of The Public Library in Britain 1914-2000 and Libraries of Light: British Public Library Design in the Long 1960s as well as co-author of The Early Information Society. He earned his master's degree in social and economic history from the University of London and his doctorate from London Metropolitan University.
Mak is a historian of ancient, medieval, and modern information practices. Her first book, How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press, 2011), examines the page as a dynamic interface in scrolls, tablets, books, and screens from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. She holds appointments in the iSchool, Department of History, and Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Illinois. Mak received a PhD in medieval studies from the University of Notre Dame.
END
Handbook offers in-depth exploration of information history
2025-09-25
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Super-resistant bacteria found in wild birds at a rehabilitation center on the coast of São Paulo state, Brazil
2025-09-25
Researchers supported by FAPESP have found antibiotic-resistant bacterial clones in wild birds at a rehabilitation center. The identified Escherichia coli clones have been found in community- and hospital-acquired human infections worldwide, and they were present in the intestinal tracts of a vulture and an owl.
The impact of these strains on animals is unknown; however, in humans, they are known to cause infections in patients with weakened immune systems for which there are few effective treatment options. The ...
Leading maternal health physician-scientist Andreea Creanga, MD, Ph.D., named chair of the department of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine
2025-09-25
University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced today that Andreea Creanga, MD, PhD, a distinguished and internationally recognized leader in maternal and perinatal health, has been appointed the new Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. She will also be installed as the Simon and Bessie Grollman Distinguished Professor. Her appointment is effective December 2025.
The Department of Epidemiology and Public Health houses seven divisions ...
AI system learns from many types of scientific information and runs experiments to discover new materials
2025-09-25
Machine-learning models can speed up the discovery of new materials by making predictions and suggesting experiments. But most models today only consider a few specific types of data or variables. Compare that with human scientists, who work in a collaborative environment and consider experimental results, the broader scientific literature, imaging and structural analysis, personal experience or intuition, and input from colleagues and peer reviewers.
Now, MIT researchers have developed a method for optimizing materials recipes and planning experiments that incorporates information from diverse sources like insights ...
UAlbany Atmospheric scientists awarded $855K NOAA grant for water isotope research
2025-09-25
ALBANY, N.Y. (Sept. 25, 2025) — Researchers at the University at Albany are exploring a new method to improve weather and climate forecasts that relies on a tiny but powerful assistant — stable water isotopes.
Water isotopes are the naturally occurring variations of hydrogen and oxygen atoms within water molecules. Isotopes have slightly different masses but the same chemical properties, acting like fingerprints that reveal information about a sample’s origin and history.
By measuring differences in isotope masses in rainfall, snow, or even ice, scientists can trace where moisture came from, how it ...
MD Anderson experts highlight top trends ahead of 2025 ASTRO meeting
2025-09-25
Major themes include advances in actionable biomarkers in pancreatic cancer, proton therapy, artificial intelligence and theranostics
MD Anderson researchers will present more than 65 abstracts, including several providing breakthroughs within these themes
Recent advances in radiation oncology have led to shorter treatment times, increased early disease detection, and artificial intelligence applications that continue to improve cancer care. Ahead of this week's 2025 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting, researchers from The University ...
How could AI help (and hurt) forestry?
2025-09-25
The whole world is buzzing about the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence—including those who work in forestry.
AI could revolutionize forestry, making it possible to save more lives and ecosystems through faster and more accurate data analysis. But if forestry professionals aren’t careful, AI could also botch critical land-management and policy decisions.
That’s why NAU School of Forestry faculty members Alark Saxena, Luke Ritter and Derek Uhey took it upon themselves to understand foresters’ relationship with AI: how they’re using it now, how they hope to leverage it in the future and what concerns them. ...
Tiniest lung tumors that are hardest to reach can be diagnosed with robot-assisted bronchoscope
2025-09-25
A cutting-edge bronchoscope that is guided with the help of a robot can reach very small tumours growing in hard-to-reach parts of the lung, according to results of a gold-standard randomised-controlled trial that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands [1].
The robot-assisted bronchoscope also uses a specialised CT scanner to find tumours buried in the lungs, enabling doctors to take a biopsy and confirm whether they are cancerous. ...
Babies who grow up around dogs may have a lower risk of developing childhood asthma
2025-09-25
Babies exposed to dog allergens in the home have a lower risk of developing asthma by the age of five years, according to research that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Amsterdam, the Netherlands [1]. The researchers also studied babies’ exposure to cat allergens but did not find the same protective effect.
The research was by a team from The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada, led by Dr Makiko Nanishi, and will be presented by Dr Jacob McCoy. Speaking ahead of the Congress Dr McCoy said: “Asthma is a very common chronic respiratory illness in children, with the highest rates in the ...
New book examines language loss among multilingual speakers
2025-09-25
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State Professor of German and Linguistics Michael Putnam has spent a good part of his career thinking about language attrition, or “language loss,” among bi- and multilingual speakers. Now, it’s the basis of his latest book.
Putnam and David Natvig, associate professor of Nordic linguistics at the University of Stavanger in Norway, are the authors of the new book, “An Introduction to Language Attrition: Linguistic, Social, and Cognitive Perspectives.”
Published by Routledge, the book provides ...
Q&A: Insect pollinators need more higher-quality habitats to help farmers, new research says
2025-09-25
Bees and butterflies help produce our food by pollinating the crops farmers grow. In fact, 35% of the world's food crops, including fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, depend on pollinators.
But agricultural land is a poor substitute for wild habitat — it often lacks the food and shelter that insect pollinators require. To stay healthy, these creatures need access to pockets of more natural land amid all the agriculture. Currently, pollinators around the world and in Washington are in decline, in part because of the loss of their wild habitat.
In a new study, a team of scientists from around the world analyzed a massive dataset ...