Paul Vetch

The Content Management HandbookMartin White.

of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/), to smaller and less well-known initiatives, such as the Am Baile (Gaelic Village) project (http:// www.ambaile.org.uk/en/index.jsp), making the text applicable and useful to a project of any size and funding. There is little that is remarkably new here, with most issues having been raised in some diverse publication, webpage, or article beforehand, but Hughes’ consistent and readable writing style draws together many disparate issues into a cohesive whole which is an appropriate starting point for anyone about to engage in a digitization project. The thorough and useful bibliography provides further reading, whilst the text is anchored with references to online resources which should prevent it in ageing too rapidly; although the technology behind the creation of digital surrogates will change, the issues confronting the information manager regarding selection, management, and budget should not (or at least, not at the same pace as technological change). Where this book is at its most useful, though, is its common-sense approach to management, to cut through the various and sometime conflicting advice which can be acquired when setting up a digitization project. Although Hughes advocates reading widely and consulting guides to good practice, the responsibility regarding all aspects of the digitization process must lie with the manager, who (or whose staff) should know the collection better than any external guide to good practice could. Hughes suggests that examining ‘existing guidelines will allow the extrapolation of the best and most recent standards currently available that can be modified to fit the intended purpose, institution and budget’ (p. 200). Her model of management is one that is fluid, aware of rapid technological change and institutional requirements, whilst focussing concomitantly on what is best for the institution, staff, collection, and individual artefact. This common-sense approach can make fearsome reading—Hughes’ honest, well-read and factual text reveals digitization to be the complex, difficult, time-consuming, and costly process that it is, rather than an easy and quick way to give a Memory Institution status in a technically modern world. Nevertheless, the management issues described and detailed in this book need to be understood and addressed before a digitization project can be successfully carried out; the act of digitization itself is just a small part of the whole process. The book works best when the (mostly online) external resources it refers to can be accessed alongside the text. This book is a necessary and useful overview of a deceptively complex undertaking, and will provide a useful starting point for those about to engage in the creation of digital surrogates of cultural and heritage material.