Joshua M. Ginn 2008-07-26

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

David is the first speaker on Part 2 of Library of Congress Series on the Digital Future: Collection

Michael K. Bergman 2006-06-25

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

The first contribution of David Levy's book is to provide insight on what exactly IS a document. Like many common and prosaic words, the idea of what constitutes a document proves to be more than a little challenging. (Here are a couple of definitional challenges. On the one hand, an entire paper document can be reproduced as a single Web page or split into numerous parts and therefore many Web pages. Alternatively, an encyclopedia could be interpreted as a single document in one case, or each of its split-out articles as separate documents in their own right.)

Levy illustrates the real role of a document as an artifact of historical fixity by the case of the lowly sales receipt, dozens of which pepper our daily lives and go without notice. The paper receipt most often contains information on the amount, location, for what and time of the transaction, say for buying a deli sandwich. But through the Middle Ages and into the 1700s, witnesses (wit, to know) were required to vouch (act as a witness) that any economic transaction had indeed taken place. In other words, a simple and taken-for-granted paper document such as the sales receipt (or voucher) was a key enabler in oiling the wheels of commerce. A simple slip of paper replaces the hassle and expense of a physical witness.

Other documents, of course, enabled coordination of train schedules, ledger accounting and other economic benefits, plus, also of course, the spreading of ideas and knowledge, fiction and non-fiction. Levy tells similar stories regarding the emergence of greeting cards, post cards and the postal service.

Levy works best when he attempts to fulfill his stated aim of placing documents within their own cultural time and place. The story is thus anecdotal and diverse from Woody Allen's Annie Hall to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The result is this book is a surprisingly literal treatment given the author's doctoral background and then professorship in information science.

While attempts are made to relate this material to information and library science, indeed to the emergence of the digital age, the book ends up feeling fragmented and scattered, lacking an articulated thesis. For example, no mention whatsoever is made of Elizabeth Eisenstein's 1979 classic book, "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change," which postulated the role of written documents in the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, among other historical epochs. The concluding chapters ramble from earthquakes to car advertising to "existential/religious perspectives." After a promising start, I felt like the air had been let out of the balloon by book's end.

I recommend this book to others mostly because of its episodic keen insights, though more of the mark could have been hit. Finally, I should note that any book with documents as its subject should take the time to include an index -- shame, shame.

Jonathan Betz-Zall 2006-06-19

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Three years after publication, the march of technology has not made this book obsolete. Levy correctly identified the sore spots that technological change has rubbed on our sense of civilized society, and pointed out to what degree the problems were realized 100 years ago. Previous reviewers complained about pointlessness, but I appreciate Levy's many small points as well as his few large ones. However, I wouldn't buy a copy; this is the kind of book that public libraries are good for.

Midwest Book Review 2004-06-03

2 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

The changing face of documents and images in the digital age is considered in a title which covers all kinds of documents and the changes they face from the digital world; from recipes and letters to business memos and other writings. Is the book doomed? Is paper to disappear? Scrolling Forward: Making Sense Of Documents In The Digital Age by David M. Levy examines documents of all kinds as they relate to culture, history and technological changes.

Daniel Akst 2004-02-25

6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

This meditation on the changing role of documents in our lives is simply marvelous--wide-ranging, literate and even profound. Levy is no Luddite--quite to the contrary--but his essays here will change the way you think about the digital revolution. I might add that the prose is a model of what writing of this kind should be: modest, inviting and free of academic jargon or posturing. Nicely done.