Upon rereading the description above and seeing that this book is targeted at senior management, I cringed. This book is actually for people who are fascinated by the minutiae of information, its products, formats, labels, design, and not so much its application. This book is a beauty to behold- it is robust in design, opens flat, the font lovingly laid out on each page and lovely obfuscating figures dot this book. Don't be fooled into thinking, however, that Making knowledge visible is geared towards senior managers (even if that is its stated aim) or is terribly academic. It is a political work.
Its aim is to make people aware that many organisations do primarily produce information products and that these ought to be the heart and soul of what they do- please manage these well, this book implores. The strength of this book is its case studies of which there are many. These are drawn from all sectors.
This books succeeds to some extent in making us think about information products- that is the best thing I can say for it. I feel that the focus of the book is too vague- are we being told to manage information products properly, or to reduce the potential for these to 'subtract value' from our organisation or just to be systematic about how we start to create or audit these products? I was frustrated by the practical pretense, but this was it, just a pretense. So what is this book- it isn't all things to all people so why is it trying to be?
Things that might be explained simply are made confusing. Is this down to a stubbornness to try to make old concepts new? Acronyms are not standard - TOTO is short for 'top of the organisation'- huh? Diagrams that could be designed to be clear are not and I am not sure what the point is of many of them.
I think that Orna has written a book that perhaps only a librarian could love. It is a shame though because this book does have a lot to say to the public and private sector in general. Her enthusiasm for the topic is evident but it needs to be translated and packaged for senior managers if that is who she wants to speak to. And in my opinion, there are very few senior managers who will wade through a book that peppers them in case studies and bewildering figures and wraps up old concepts in confusing new lingo.