This thought-provoking book identifies the limits of the field of information science, and thus raises very real problems of the discipline in the context of people using, misusing, and abusing information. S. D. Neill provides many examples of the uses of information to illustrate how difficult it is to work with. In particular, he highlights problems of information scientists using information to study information. It is the author's contention that information use problems are, in certain instances, insoluble dilemmas, for they are grounded in human nature and can be solved only by altering that nature.

Neill analyzes certain events to show that while sufficient information was available, it wasn't used--either because of greed, personality, or judgement. Information is power if, and only if, you have enough knowledge to understand it, the will to use it, and the ability to communicate it. The dilemmas are found in the control of information for retrieval, the use of data originally collected for other purposes, and research methods in library and information science.