567 PUBLICATIONS IN REVIEW Practitioners will find many items of value too, but the future for credible and effective schemes will be truly determined through hands-on experience of implementing programs in a wide range of settings and contexts.  Abigail Rome: Independent Consultant in Ecotourism and Conservation, 605 Ray Drive, Silver Spring MD 20910, USA. Email <abirome@aol.com>. Assigned 19 September 2000. Submitted 22 January 2001. Accepted 29 January 2001. PII: S0160-7383(01)00053-6 Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 567–568, 2002 Printed in Great Britain 0160-7383/02/$22.00 Information Technology and Tourism: A Challenging Relationship By Hans Werthner and Stefan Klein. Springer Computer Science (Sachsenplatz 4-6, 1200 Vienna, Austria) 1999, xv+323 pp (tables, figures, index, bibliography) $59.95 Pbk. ISBN 3-211-83274-2. Pip Forer University of Auckland, New Zealand It is not unusual in the information technology (IT) literature to see differ- ent perspectives expressed on the same technology, particularly when it is of critical concern as an application to one user group while another sees it as an academic subject. When the users are involved in prosaic applications that are deeply socially embedded, and the technology itself is complex, many- layered and inaccessible to all but a few, these differences can become dra- matic. The literature on geographic information systems is one example of a technology that stimulates widely divergent views; web is another. Reading the literature on the application of information technology from one generation to another (which may be just 3–4 years) reveals a changing emphasis and a deepening appreciation of the dialectic between discovery and practice, and the way technology embeds itself in practice. Thus, it is appropriate to begin a review of a text on IT and tourism by placing the book in context. Werthner and Klein’s delightful book reflects a technological partnership of IT with tourism in a period of major flux. The authors have outstandingly analyzed how increasingly integrated IT systems have sought to mimic and strengthen many of the corporate and marketing relations that form the corpus of tourism operations. In terms of perspective, the book clearly is in the IT camp. Information Technology and Tourism may be better viewed as coming from a management systems/science tradition than from tourism. It is about how IT has carved a niche within tourism rather than about how tourism uses IT. As such, it is in striking contrast to Sheldon’s (1998) Tourism Information Technology, which belongs to the latter camp.