Editorial

Citation

Chalcraft, A. (2005), "Editorial", Reference Reviews, Vol. 19 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2005.09919aaa.001

Editorial

The highlight of this issue of Reference Reviews has to be the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) (RR 2004/59). Its release by Oxford University Press (OUP) in September is, in the UK at least, the major reference publishing event of 2004, if not the decade. The appearance of a new reference source does not usually feature in the media, but on this occasion newspapers, radio and television all carried news articles featuring ODNB’s publication. On the whole, this reporting, although not always accurate and frequently fixated with some of the more notorious characters given biographies, was positive and welcoming. It is good to see a reference source receiving such wide and positive attention. Such exposure is not only welcome publicity for OUP, but is also likely to increase the profile of reference libraries who are, after all, the most likely custodians of ODNB, whether in print or online.

Probably one of the main reasons that ODNB has grabbed such wide media attention is that it is publishing on a grand scale, or to use some words from our review, a “heroic” and “triumphant” undertaking. Without wishing to trespass on the review of the online version provided by Stuart James, it is worth reflecting on some statistics that underline the scale of this project. Twelve years in the making, ODNB was steered by 30 OUP in house research scholars, 12 external consultant editors and 400 external associate editors. These directed the work of 10,000 specialist expert contributors, about 7,000 drawn from the UK with a further 1,400 from the US. Between them, the contributors provided no less than 54,922 entries for persons who died before 31 December 2000, backed by 10,057 illustrations from the National Portrait Gallery. Of the 36,000 articles from the original Dictionary of National Biography and its supplements, 70 per cent were completely rewritten and the remaining 30 per cent heavily revised. Finally and perhaps most tangibly, the 60 volumes of the print edition have 61,792 pages and will occupy (librarians challenged for space please note) no less than 3.6 metres of shelving.

There are two other features of ODNB which readers of Reference Reviews might find of particular interest. First, as the whole project has cost OUP £26 million, and the only significant support has been £4 million from the British Academy, the publishing house has no realistic prospect of making a commercial return. ODNB, therefore, is scholarly publishing at its best, a venture undertaken for the sake of it as a service to the academic and wider community. This is something with which all librarians, especially those in the reference sector, can identify and in which they should rejoice. Here is a product that we can buy without the taint of commercial exploitation, something produced for the public good rather than purely profit. The second feature of interest is far less noble, but still good news as far as librarians are concerned. According to Liz Chapman, Librarian at the Taylor Institution, Oxford, no less than 1,007 of ODNB’s entries contain the word “librarian”. Of course, this does not mean that all were practising professionals, but at around 2 per cent of the total this seems a fairly creditable figure, and underlines the centrality of librarians and libraries in British history (further detail on librarians in ODNB is available in Liz Chapman’s paper at (http://digital.caalini.it/retreat/2003_docs/Chapman.pdf).

Although ODNB is unquestionably the star of this issue of Reference Reviews, we also carry a large number of reviews of other significant new or updated resources. Another product from OUP is the four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (RR 2005/38). This follows hard on the heels of several other “Encyclopedias” of American literature, notably those from Facts on File (Berkin et al., 2002) and Continuum (Serafin and Bendixen, 1999), but, as with ODNB, OUP has produced a landmark set which most larger libraries maintaining rounded collections on American literature will want to acquire. Another four-volume print work subjected to scrutiny is Grolier Academic’s Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era (RR 2005/56). This is one of those titles that slips quietly onto the reference stage without the fanfare of publicity that accompanies many works of a similar magnitude. Even though the Victorian era is a historical period well covered in reference terms, this new set deserves careful consideration by any library with an interest in the period or that is seeking to strengthen its holdings on 19th-century Britain.

Turning to electronic information sources, probably the most significant and certainly the largest database to feature is Elsevier’s latest abstracting and indexing service, Scopus (RR 2005/47). Many librarians are reluctant to mention the name Elsevier in polite company for fear of any expletives the word might engender. This is largely on account of the company’s reputation for pricing policies that many feel are close to the exploitative. At the time of going to press no pricing structure for Scopus was available but, as our review makes clear, this is a superior product, which we must hope will be within the reach of as many general and science-focused academic libraries as possible. Other general electronic sources reviewed worthy of note include the Armed Conflict Database (RR 2005/14), ETHX on the Web (RR 2005/10), Monthly Climatic Data (RR 2005/45) and ViVa: A Bibliography of Women’s History (RR 2005/60). All but the first of these are accessible free of charge, evidence once again of the power of the internet to enrich the resources of even the most poverty-stricken library.

There are many other excellent and important reference sources in this issue of Reference Reviews which will be left for the reader to explore, but there are two further reviews that deserve special mention. The first of these, that for The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia (RR 2005/13) is significant in that, as far as the editor is aware, this is the first time we have reviewed the e-book version of a title in preference to the printed text. Fittingly, this title is from ABC-Clio, probably the publisher that has done more than any other to pioneer electronic publishing of reference works. As more publishers produce reference monographs as e-books, so Reference Reviews will increasingly review the electronic rather than the printed version. The final review to highlight is that for the fourth edition of Dictionary of Pseudonyms (RR 2005/54). This is notable, in part for its content, but in particular because it is from one of the unsung heroes of the reference world, Adrian Room. One of the most prolific writers of general library reference texts, “Room” is a name that one day ought to feature in ODNB alongside the 1,007 others with some form of library connection.

Anthony ChalcraftEditor Reference Reviews and College Librarian, York St John College, York, UK