Editorial

Citation

Chalcraft, T. (2006), "Editorial", Reference Reviews, Vol. 20 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2006.09920faa.001

Editorial

An advantage of editing a journal such as this is that it provides an overview of developments and trends in reference and information publishing. Some of these do not need the vantage of a lofty editorial chair to discern; the continual drift of many resources to a web-based format, the increasing prominence of non-subscription internet resources and the emergence of aggregated reference data banks, are plain for all to see. Some trends, however, are less immediately apparent unless seen from an editorial perspective. One that has struck me over the last few years is the increasing tendency of reference publishers to produce works with “encyclopedia” as part of the title. Based on a quick and methodologically suspect survey of print titles that have passed across the desk en route to reviewers over the last four weeks, just over one-third were so labelled. It would seem that publishers are concentrating increasingly on producing printed reference resources with a highly accessible factual content. Perhaps this is a part response to competition from the Internet and the growing expectation that students, at whom many of these encyclopedias are aimed, will only use a print source if it provides a “one-stop” solution, preferably a neatly bundled and quickly accessible “answer”, readily portable into an assignment or essay.

The surge in the publication of these encyclopedias, usually relatively modest sized single or several volume works, seems to be forcing some publishers to dig deeper into the ideas barrel to haul out a different or unusual topic, slant or perspective. Take the new Sage, title Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right, reviewed in this issue of Reference Reviews (RR 2006/304), as an example. Although in may ways a highly accomplished two volume work, especially for a student audience at which it is clearly aimed, if one was being ungenerous its parcelling up of politics into two opposing volumes, the ”left” and the “right”, could be seen as a contrivance rather than academically justified. While offering such a “black-and-white” approach might provide a novel slant, dividing the world of politics so sharply seems neither practical nor helpful to users. Essentially this is a politics encyclopedia that Sage have packaged, or perhaps contorted, into a framework that has as much to do with marketing and sales opportunities as providing a balanced reference tool.

Just as reference publishing seems to be focussing increasingly on works with a factual content, so it seems to be retreating from producing tools that provide for the discovery of information in other sources. Although many of the encyclopedias pouring of the presses often have useful potted “further reading” lists appended to articles, the publication of standalone bibliographical sources in print seems to be in possibly terminal decline. Probably less than one in 20 of the items that make their way across the editorial desk are of a primarily bibliographical nature. The production of the monograph bibliography is now largely the preserve of a limited number of scholarly publishers. The reasons for this are not hard to discern. Huge bibliographical databases such as WorldCat and journal indexing tools such as Web of Science make the production of specialist bibliographical tools both unnecessary and unprofitable.

In this issue of Reference Reviews, somewhat against the trend, we do cover a useful and highly competent printed bibliography, the International Bibliography of Sikh Studies (RR 2006/299) from Springer. Also in these columns, however, is an example of another development that will perhaps compensate for the decline of the monograph bibliography, the appearance of specialised scholarly bibliographies as dedicated web sites. Aristotle Bibliography (RR 2006/293) is a subscription source typical of a fast expanding number of sites, some fee-based but many freely accessible, that provide high quality and readily updateable bibliographical information. This is a welcome trend, perhaps suggesting that the specialised bibliographical monograph will be replaced but carried forward by specialised bibliographies mounted on the web. If so, perhaps it will fuel a resurgence in the art of bibliographical scholarship in which librarians have traditionally played a prominent role.

Touching on the craft of bibliography and the librarian bibliographer causes me to mention the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals/Nielsen BookData Reference Awards 2005 presentation of the Walford Award for Bibliography to Alan Day. One of the longest serving reviewers for this journal and Editorial Board member, Alan has contributed to bibliographical scholarship across a range of topics including history, archaeology, discovery and exploration. Fittingly previously an editor of Walford’s Guide itself, his latest volume, Historical Dictionary of the Discovery of the Northwest Passage, will be reviewed in the next issue of Reference Reviews. Meanwhile Alan contributes the first review of this issue with a look at that reference stalwart The International Year Book and Statesman’s Who’s Who (RR 2006/292), now published by Brill under its Martinus Nijhoff imprint.

Alan’s review is the first of 60 in this issue of which about one-quarter are electronic sources and no less than 17 have the word encyclopedia somewhere in the title. Foremost among these has to be Encyclopedia of Philosophy (RR 2006/297), released under Thomson Gale’s Macmillan Reference imprint. The second edition of a work first published as far back as 1967, it will inevitably be seen as an alternative and rival to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy the revised electronic version of which was also recently reviewed in these columns (RR 2004/304). Another major set carrying the label “encyclopedia” is the four-volume The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore and Folklife (RR 2006/306). One of the few recent reference works to cover folklore at the international level, it will be especially attractive to public library collections. Oxford companions are another popular reference in public libraries and here we cover two titles, the new Oxford Companion to the Photograph (RR 2006/336) and the second edition, published after a 30-year gap, of The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (RR 2006/344). Finally, among a number of excellent electronic reference sources covered, particular note should be made of an exceptional free access site. The Old Bailey Proceedings Online (RR 2006/311) offers a digitised version of all surviving editions of Old Bailey Proceedings 1674 to 1834.

Tony ChalcraftEditor, Reference Reviews, and College Librarian, University College of York St John, York, UK