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Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age, David M. Levy. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001. 212 p. $24.95 (ISBN 1-55970-553-1)
This valuable book joins a growing and varied literature that emphasizes the importance of studying documentation in its varied formats, from books and other mass media to administrative and archival records. Like many other contributors to this literature, David Levy, of the Information School at the University of Washington and a former researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, notes the ubiquity, yet curious invisibility of the documents we use. Comparing this paradox to other curious silences, such as avoidance of talk about death, he observes, "Even when things become invisible-whether it is the fact of death or the endless varieties of written forms around us-there may still be times and reasons to bring them to light, to open them up to inspection and reflection." (p. 4) For Levy, our sometimes-disorienting transition to electronic communications provides the occasion to explore documents as objects of study, rather than as mere vehicles for study of other things. While Levy draws eclectically on the wider literature to do so, he...