Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary and Reference Book (9th ed.)

Citation

Gregory, M. (2000), "Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary and Reference Book (9th ed.)", New Library World, Vol. 101 No. 7, pp. 333-336. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2000.101.7.333.3

This edition includes over 9,600 terms of organisations, projects and acronyms in the subject areas of information management, library science, publishing and archive management, of which 1,100 are new entries, projects and programme names, and over 2,000 entries have been revised; also included are some 850‐plus Web addresses. This essentially British title contains many references to international libraries, organisations, publications and services; together these changes represent the development of this publication over its 60‐year history in general and the years since the previous edition in particular. Ray Prytherch, in his preface, details new elements featured in this edition and explains those areas that he has excluded and the ethos behind the entries and their word‐by‐word arrangement.

This standard and comprehensive reference work is familiar to, and used regularly by most information and library management students and tutors for the definition of professional terms and to increase their general subject awareness. It is arguably used less often than other dictionaries and directories by professional staff in their day‐to‐day activities. The value to information professionals, however, is that it is compiled by a subject specialist for the information disciplines and therefore is referred to for the authoritative definition of a term required in a library publication, policy document, presentation or lecture perhaps.

This edition keeps pace with professional developments in the information industry and describes topical projects, issues and initiatives, CLUMPS , E‐publishing and push technology, for example. IT‐specific coverage is limited to new concepts and projects, which reflect the professional interests of the readership, rather than to software packages and technical issues.

The inclusion of URLs certainly is in keeping with a year 2000 publication but the dynamic nature of the Internet means that paths and addresses change constantly; consequently many of the Web sites referred to can no longer be accessed via the URLs provided – Agora, Branching out, Catalogue Bridge, Elvil, Midasnet, for example.

Anyone maintaining Web pages knows that it is very difficult to ensure accurate and working links; it would be useful therefore to include the last [successful] date accessed against each URL entry, in line with recommendations for citing electronic sources; that minor irritation aside, browsing the URLs is a useful way of adding to your favourites or bookmarks.

It might in some ways be useful to sub‐divide the publication into subject sections, particularly printing and publishing, which seem to overwhelm the listings on many pages, but this would inevitably fragment the work and we would lose the pleasure of finding some hidden gem serendipitously.

When asked to comment on or review this type of glossary, it is human nature to check for omissions and irregularities; inevitably any criticism of this type will reflect the bias, subject and employment background of the reviewer and no doubt each one would compile a different wish list. A random dipping‐in to check terms of personal interest and others at the suggestion of colleagues produced a very high success rate; the very few comments I would make are on the absence of Teaching Quality Review (TQR), and its predecessor Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA), which feature highly in the lives of academic librarians and the lack of reference to Uniclass in the organisation of trade literature and information for the construction industry as the potential replacement for SfB, which is described.

Regarding this reference work, as the compiler states, the glossary “can stand rigorous scrutiny”, an erudite advisory team provides subject expertise and an international perspective supports him, and it will remain a must for the information professional’s bookshelf.