This textbook provides an elementary presentation of office equipment, office systems, communications technology, and advice on installing and managing office automation systems. The textbook is primarily intended for the student with minimal technical background rather than the computer science student, information systems student, or technical person. The authors have emphasized breadth of coverage rather than depth. The book is organized into four parts as follows:
(1) An Introduction to the World of Office Automation
(2) System Fundamentals and Office Automation Components
(3) Automated Systems in the Office
(4) System Life Cycles
I find the book to be pedagogically sound, and its explanations and organization are good. The end of each of the 18 chapters contains a summary, discussion questions, and a case study (typically taken from some office management magazine). On the other hand, the discussions in the book are frequently shallow, somewhat out of date, and occasionally misinformed. An example of this is the case study at the end of chapter three in which a university’s office system is presented with the title “Office Automation System Here is One of Today’s Most Advanced.” This system was published in CSU Comments in 1982, is an inadequate and obsolete system by today’s standards, and was not one of the advanced systems even in 1982. It is a poor example to be in a book. Some topics, such as word processing and reprographics, are covered in detail. Other important topics, such as desktop publishing, document architectures, IBM’s SNA, and office procedure automation, are not explained at all. I was surprised that spreadsheets, which are a pragmatic best seller, are not explained in any detail. Only one-half page is devoted to this topic, and the old, obsolete VisiCalc is shown but not explained. This typifies the technical mediocrity of the book. Integrated systems are described as “new operating environments in which information can be easily shuffled among different programs.” This description misses important modern concepts associated with integration, such as uniform user interfaces across applications, shared databases and information structures, and knowledge by applications of related applications.
The book also could have been strengthened by presenting more vision of the future of office systems. For example, there is already emerging a coupling of office systems and artificial intelligence. There were numerous office system prototypes reported in the literature in the 1970s and early 1980s that could beneficially have been mentioned in the book, e.g., IBM’s Query By Example and their Office By Example. The notion of exemplary programming of office workstations is an important one that was unfortunately omitted from the book.
In summary, this textbook touches upon many useful office automation topics. The book stresses breadth at an elementary level, but it does not obtain the depth of explanation that can be found in many office automation books on the market. It is a pedagogically sound book meant to be used for a course within an office administration curriculum, and as such fills a niche. It suffers from a chronic problem of office systems books: the technological rate of change is so fast that obsolescence quickly sets in. The book has good, but dated, discussions of topics like word processing and micrographics, but very small and shallow coverage of other important topics such as spreadsheets and IBM’s SNA.
