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Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age | 
 enlarge | Author: David M. Levy
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.01
You Save: $6.94 (50%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 265487
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 1559706481
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.2244
EAN: 9781559706483
ASIN: 1559706481
Publication Date: November 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: H20080822210137T
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
What's up, doc? Information scientist David M. Levy wants us to look at the documents that fill our lives, and his book Scrolling Forward is a thoughtful reflection on their near-omnipresence. Levy has the perfect resume for this job--after getting his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1981, he took off for England to pursue the study of calligraphy and bookbinding. His love of books shows in his writing, which is rich with references and anecdotes from Walt Whitman to Woody Allen. Drawing on examples as disparate as grocery store receipts, greeting cards, identity papers, and (of course) e-mail, Levy finds the common threads binding them together and explores how and why we use them in daily life. He looks at digitization closely, considering how speed, ease of editing, and potentially perfect copying changes our traditional considerations of documentation. Though he insists that he's looking at the present, not speculating about the future, it's hard to see how to avoid looking ahead after reading Scrolling Forward. --Rob Lightner
Product Description
What's up, doc? Information scientist David M. Levy wants us to look at the documents that fill our lives, and his book Scrolling Forward is a thoughtful reflection on their near-omnipresence. Levy has the perfect r+sum+ for this job--after getting his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1981, he took off for England to pursue the study of calligraphy and bookbinding. His love of books shows in his writing, which is rich with references and anecdotes from Walt Whitman to Woody Allen.Drawing on examples as disparate as grocery store receipts, greeting cards, identity papers, and (of course) e-mail, Levy finds the common threads binding them together and explores how and why we use them in daily life. He looks at digitization closely, considering how speed, ease of editing, and potentially perfect copying changes our traditional considerations of documentation. Though he insists that he's looking at the present, not speculating about the future, it's hard to see how to avoid looking ahead after reading Scrolling Forward. --Rob Lightner
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Library of Congress' review July 26, 2008
David is the first speaker on Part 2 of Library of Congress Series on the Digital Future: Collection
What is a Document? June 26, 2006
2 out of 3 found this 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.
has retained its value over the years June 19, 2006
1 out of 1 found this 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.
 Is paper to disappear? June 3, 2004
3 out of 9 found this 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.
Documentation for our times February 25, 2004
6 out of 11 found this 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.
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