Book Review

Abstract

rhetoric of “datafication” in academic discourse, and the concurrent push in records management to define records as a subset of data. Yeo’s argument is at its shakiest here. He insists on a rudimentary interpretation of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of data, using the term’s origins in empiricism to cast data themselves as “uncritical notions of fact” (p. 116). Yeo’s equally uncritical acceptance of this definition in corporate and government environments is a less than compelling way of differentiating data from records. Here, he reaches too far to highlight differences between the two concepts, though a more nuanced analysis of their credible similarities might be more effective. Fortunately, Yeo returns to more solid theoretical ground to defend records as “persistent representations” and to reiterate the centrality of social and cultural constructs to record-keeping. He asserts, “When a record is inscribed and communicated, what takes place is not a matter of information, but a matter of social action” (p. 152). While Yeo accepts that information might serve as an affordance of a record, he holds that a record is more immediately a tangible part of a social fabric of rights and obligations than information, and less a physical byproduct of empiricism to be manipulated, controlled, and corrected than data. The result is a compelling defense of the record against the encroaching rhetoric of an informational paradigm that values views and clicks over authenticity and understanding.