The role of public memory in a digital information age beckons us to explore how information is stored, managed, and circulated throughout various networks. Engaging with questions of public memory allows us to meditate on how we and future generations have developed processes and methods of information management that shape how knowledge emerges today. In order to understand how public memory interacts with networks of information, we must look at the systems and technologies that store, manage, and make publicly accessible this information. Nathan R. Johnson’s Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age serves as an important contribution to this task by historicizing the formation of these information infrastructures. Johnson contends that the convergence between the labor of memory infrastructure and the development of mnemonic technê directly drives circulation of knowledge—and the history of this convergence undergirds the way networked archives take shape in our digital present.Architects of Memory carefully stitches together the history of memory with a detailed account of information science’s development in building infrastructures of memory in library schools and military intelligence agencies. In doing so, Johnson uses two key frameworks—memory infrastructure and mnemonic technê—to forge connections between memory as a commonplace in rhetorical history and in a digital age. By definition, memory infrastructure, per Johnson, refers to “the backgrounds that expose particular modes of memory” and elucidates a society’s typical patterns for exchanging and remembering information (6). Mnemonic technê denotes the technological resources used to collect, organize, and archive information that became crucial to the development of information science in the mid-twentieth century. While chapters 1 to 6 trace how memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê interanimated one another throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Johnson’s “intermezzo” chapters provide specific examples that narrow in on the development of mnemonic technê. For example, the emergence of the Dewey Decimal Classification, punch-card coding systems, and library book trucks represent how mnemonic technê formed to systematize the processes of accessing information, which ultimately created networked memory infrastructures that produce patterns of memory management. Johnson shows that these technologies are issues of public memory because the systems that store information are the means by which future generations will come to access this information, meaning that these technologies mediate the information that publics will engage with and remember in the future.Chapter 1 of Architects of Memory is devoted to exploring the utility of an infrastructural model for understanding the rhetorical nature of memory. Johnson stresses that memory infrastructures both bridge the gap between what is remembered and what is forgotten and intervene in the process of remembering and forgetting (15). Johnson’s lengthy explanation of these phenomena is important in demonstrating how this infrastructural model stands far apart from how memory has been typically thought of in the field of rhetoric; without this long and at times repetitive explanation, the reader may struggle to understand that mnemonic technê and memory infrastructures bear a symbiotic relationship and collaborate in managing modes of public memory. Johnson discusses how artificial mnemonic devices give our future selves tools to remember the past, which, for Johnson, exemplifies how memory acts as a mode of exchange—an exchange of information regulated by the practices we use to store and access this information. Juno Moneta’s symbol on the Roman coin, as a marker of citizenship and economic participation, provides a metaphor for memory in that the networked exchange of coins crystalized the image of Juno Moneta as an important figurehead in Roman culture. Johnson’s detour into the figures of Simonides and Juno Moneta distracts from his theoretical hedging in this initial chapter because the book largely covers the twentieth-century development of information science, and yet this sets the foundation for the rest of the book by offering a helpful illustration of memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê that aids in navigating the following chapters.One of Johnson’s main contributions in this book is his thesis that the symbiotic relationship between memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê would not exist without the human labor forces that built these connections. Johnson dedicates chapter 2 to describing how the post–World War II panic over information security galvanized Western militaries to develop more sophisticated systems for scientific research and communication. The geopolitical impetus for protecting government information in the Cold War era intensified the development of more memory systems for the purposes of distributing and evaluating scientific research. Ushered in by the second industrial revolution (1870–1930), this new age of memory innovation gave rise to developments such as Paul Otlet’s Universal Decimal Classification (UDC). Further, the rise of “operations research,” championed by scientists like John Desmond Bernal, gave way to a new type of documentation that gathered data for the purposes of mathematical analysis (37). As an example, Bernal’s National Distributing Authorities (NDA) created a centralized system whereby those who work in science fields could be granted direct access to scientific research apart from the genre of academic journals. Johnson notes that while Bernal’s NDA forwarded a centralized system that ultimately failed, Bernal’s efforts mark an important milestone in the systemization of information distribution. The concept of centralized memory technologies—such as punch-card systems and microfilm—that were accessible for workers across a variety of fields took traction, which, as Johnson argues, speaks to the power of mnemonic technê to construct fields of public memory.Johnson explains in the first intermezzo chapter why information science and librarianship historically held a distant relationship. Librarianship, as a field characterized as “service-oriented” and mostly employing women, was largely disrespected, and the advent of information science could be characterized as a move to “exorcise the library spirit” (47). Thus, Johnson details in chapter 3 how information science upturned the structure of the library from the inside out. Because scientists often depended on libraries for accessing information, the postwar exigence for enhancing scientific communication and research trickled into the library sphere, ultimately reshaping library education to center around networks of information exchange. Johnson oscillates between exploring the Cold War panic over defending science research and the flourishing of professional librarian schools—a move that solidifies the causal relationship between postwar operations research and the revolutionizing of memory technologies in everyday libraries. Specifically, government grants given to Georgia Tech libraries allowed for Dorothy Crosland, the lead librarian at Georgia Tech from 1953 to 1971, to train librarians to be specialists in science and technical information—which led to the creation of a graduate program in information science. This institutional reform put a scientific sheen on the process of locating, storing, and accessing information, which created professional distinctions between the “information scientist” and the more bookish “librarian.” Information science, moreover, developed new systems for the retrieval of source information—such as Calvin Mooers’s Zatocoding system, the subject of Architects of Memory’s second intermezzo chapter. Johnson encourages the reader to see that the advent of information science, in part, stands to masculinize the field of librarianship in a way that glosses over the feminine history of library work. But instead of teasing out the ramifications of this conflict, Johnson turns at the end of chapter 3 to criticize the field of rhetoric’s indifference to memory during the mid-twentieth century. Denouncing Edward Corbett’s claim that memory is “a dead canon,” Johnson shows how the development of information science and new librarian graduate programs at Georgia Tech reveal that memory was far from a dead canon at the time. This switch to discussing rhetorical studies’ thoughts on memory at the time distracts from Johnson’s larger project of tracing the relationship between librarianship and information science, but at the same time it underlines Johnson’s work in restoring what memory can offer—and has offered—rhetorical studies.Chapter 4 clarifies that while government funding allowed for information science to blossom under the postwar frenzy for securing scientific communication, the practice of organizing and processing information in an accessible way was—and had always been—the librarian’s game. Specifically, Robert S. Taylor’s The Making of a Library (1972) outlined the transition from book-centered library services to making the library an “information institution” (91). Johnson upholds Taylor’s book as a key signifier of how this transition reflected both Cold War anxieties and a pivotal turning point in information access. Taylor was quite nervous about the possibilities bestowed by the library’s reformation as an “information institution,” and yet it was written to guide librarians and information scientists into the future of the profession. Even though Taylor remained loyal to his librarian roots, his career at the School of Library Science at Syracuse unearthed the tradition of “librarianship” and redirected library training to center around the new technologies and newer demands for accessing information. Whereas “the older course taught bibliography and literature and included sessions detailing particular academic subjects, . . . the newer informational course taught students the structure, channels, and systems of a universal scientific community” (103). This shift shows that the methods for cataloging and organizing data depend on structures of communication built both by librarians and by users over time, which indicates that library labor is less about organizing information and more about facilitating the process users undergo to locate information—effectively propping up what Johnson terms a “library economy” (105). Johnson calls us to see that teaching memory requires one to focus on how people use, access, and store modes of memory—not just the existence of memory practices themselves. Much like Crosland’s book trucks that haul books about the library for circulation (the subject of the third intermezzo chapter), the technologies one uses to access information do not lose relevance—these technologies might be picked up, dusted off, and restored for a new set of users with new demands.Johnson’s work in tracing the midcentury transformation of memory practices illustrates the symbiotic relationship between mnemonic technê and memory infrastructure. The ways people use both the mnemonic technê and memory infrastructures reveal how each take shape. In chapter 5, Johnson explains that the user’s motivations for accessing and storing data directly influence how memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê take shape. Chapter 5 pivots from the arc of the book’s predominant twentieth-century focus, as Johnson aims to rethink the tradition of memory in rhetoric’s history. He argues that memory operates as a coin, in that practices of memory center on the values and patterns of exchange that are characteristic of a community. This economic metaphor draws attention to how memory, much like currency, passes along from person to person in an established network that regulates its movement. To construct this metaphor, Johnson retells the myth of Simonides of Ceos and zeroes in on Simonides’s motivation for creating his memory palaces. By drawing on evidence from both Quintilian and Cicero’s telling of Simonides’s story, Johnson makes a compelling case that Simonides was motivated by economic reasons to remember where each person sat at Scopas’s table. In Johnson’s retelling, Simonides felt bitter about Scopas’s critique of his poem but still wanted to be paid, so when the temple fell on Scopas and his guests, Simonides sought to remember where each of them sat so that he could collect money from their families for writing their eulogies. In the same way that Simonides’s motivation for creating his memory palaces centered on money, so too can the importance of Juno Moneta to the Roman people be explained by the demands of economic exchange. While this comparison between Simonides and Juno Moneta is a bit anachronistic and far-fetched (as Johnson himself admits), this analogy suggests that memory practices can be better understood by locating users’ motivations for remembering. As the concluding chapter asserts, Johnson’s framework of memory-as-coinage illustrates that remembering and forgetting oscillate on the values and intentions of those who engage with memory practices. Chapter 6 briefly touches on the implications of Johnson’s infrastructural perspective for search engines. While he does not fully extrapolate on search engines and the algorithmic indexing that generates targeted information for users, he does imply that these memory infrastructures will play a significant role in the construction of public memory in the future. Johnson is careful to note that the construction of memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê will always be dependent on the human labor that works to make public memory possible. Just as Dorothy Crosland’s book trucks and Robert S. Taylor’s pedagogical reform changed the way library and information science work was done, so too does the future of memory technology depend on innovative labor.Johnson’s book contributes to rhetorical theory not only by calling our attention to the various technologies and systems developed over the years to accessibly store information, but also in calling attention to the rhetorical work these technologies do in shaping our interactions with information. In other words, memory infrastructures and mnemonic technê rhetorically guide our encounters with information across time and space. Though Architects of Memory applies a more historical focus and does not fully consider how memory practices will take shape in the twenty-first century, we as readers can deduce that the everyday encounters we have with search engine algorithms and targeted advertisements work on their own networked infrastructure, emerging from the tradition of data collection in information science that Architects of Memory describes. As Architects of Memory concludes, “The work of twenty-first-century mnemonists is to identify and locate memory’s commonplace so they can be reassessed continually” (155). Johnson words this as a call for rhetoricians to apply their nuanced insight into the commonplaces of networked memory infrastructures and their impact on public memory—but moreover, it is a call to the public as well to be mindful of how our commonplaces of memory will impact future generations. For rhetoricians and the public alike, Architects of Memory encourages us not just to draw on rhetorical theories of memory into our everyday encounters with information, but to take an intentional approach to exploring how the infrastructural networks of memory undergird our everyday moments of digital information access. Memory, in this sense, takes a direct role in the creation and circulation of rhetorical practices that we explore in the past, present, and future.