Everyday Information: The Evolution of Information Seeking in America (review)

In Everyday Information, edited by William Aspray and Barbara M. Hayes, the question "What did they know and when did they know it?" gains a more general meaning and a new clause: "How did they know it?" This book offers nine case studies that look at the ways that Americans acquired information over the past century. The book attempts to move the history of information beyond describing what information was available, when, and what devices were used for processing it to the way people actually used it.

What sources of information were available to a philanthropist in 1900, a car buyer in 1920, a genealogist in 1960, or a baseball fan in 1980? The authors of the historical essays in this book can tell you. But they are less successful at providing insight into how individuals put that information to use. The authors of the contemporary essays here—ethnographies of gourmet cooks, comic book fans, and teenage texters, among others—can answer that question, but at the cost of historical depth.

William Aspray's essay on the sources of information available to car purchasers exemplifies the challenges. He has pulled together a solid list of information issues and information sources for car buyers and how they changed over time. But as he admits, it's just a beginning. We don't really know where a potential car purchaser actually turned for information. How much did what he read influence him? Did he believe what the dealer told him? Or did he just buy the latest model of the marquee he always bought?

The essay on airline travel raises similar questions. The authors explain the history of information sources. But how and when did travelers use the Official Airline Guide, and when did they just call a travel agent? The same goes for philanthropy; having information available doesn't mean it was used. Maybe what mattered was what a friend said. However, we do get a better sense of the ways genealogists did their work because of the handbooks they consulted.

These are hard questions to get at in the historical record. The case studies that look at the present day can answer them, though at the cost of historical perspective and, all too often, with some of the most stilted academic language I've seen to describe everyday life and popular culture. In the tastiest essay here, for example, Jenna Hartel analyzes the interaction of cookbooks, the Web, and social connections to explain how cooks pick recipes, modify them, and put them into action. She raises questions about the relationship of culinary knowledge to culinary activity that could serve as a model for other topics as well.

The big question lurking in the background, of course, is how did the Web change things. Most of the time, the answer is, "It's hard to say." The authors have not taken the easy way out. James Cortada, for example, notes that the Internet is a good match for genealogical information because genealogists search for details and because context is not always important. However, he is careful to note that much information genealogists could use is not on the Web. (He doesn't explain how this might shape genealogical interests, though, which would be fascinating.) Is fantasy football a creation of the Internet or simply "the most recent expression of an informational turn in sports consumption that began as least as early as the nineteenth century?" Gary Chapman and Angela Newell suggest that the Internet brought fundamental changes in access to government information—a "post-FOIA envi-ronment"—but they hedge their bets on whether the Web in fact brought more civic engagement.

This book is intended to open a new field, so it's reasonable to ask how future authors might add the stories of information use to the background of information availability. In most of these essays, I believe, "information" is defined too narrowly. Gourmet cooking, car buying, and many of the other areas...