Editorial

Citation

Chalcraft, T. (2006), "Editorial", Reference Reviews, Vol. 20 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2006.09920gaa.001

Editorial

How is this for a coincidence? A few weeks a go, in a few spare minutes before I was due to attend an institutional briefing on planning for an influenza outbreak, I checked my e-mail box to find that the first item waiting for attention was a review of ABC-Clio’s new title Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impact on Human History. Included in this issue of Reference Reviews (RR 2006/377), this is a selective guide to some of the major disease outbreaks of history, including influenza. The planning session was a somewhat inconclusive affair. Library services did not rank high in the risk assessment and overall there were too many “ifs” and “buts” to devise a firm strategy. Having decided that an order for facemasks would be premature and that Library staff would not be first in the queue for immunization, I headed back to the comfort and apparent sanctuary of the Library to reflect on our disaster planning. Hitherto, this had taken no account of plague and pestilence, focussing on risks such as fire, flood and major information technology calamity. Reconsideration did, however, lead me to take a wider view of the risks to the service and, acting on the slogan “think globally act locally”, ponder possible threats to the entire range of reference and information services as provided in the modern world.

Taking a global and longer-term view, what are the major risks to the provision of reference services by libraries and how would these be maintained in emergency situations? Pandemic influenza or bird flu is just the latest in a series of threats that have featured in media headlines. Previously there was SARs and, of course, since 9/11 terrorism has dominated the list in the popular and political mind. Many in politics and the scientific community are warning however, that the greatest long-term threat is environmental, specifically climate change caused by global warming. In considering these threats the greatest reference and information related risk would seem to rest in reliance on the internet and remote sources of information for much reference provision. Although, assuming hosts and providers take expected storage precautions, the risk of irretrievable loss of databanks is remote whatever the depredations of the terrorist or weather, networks that transmit and disseminate data are vulnerable to all kinds of attacks and failures. We must also not forget that the Internet is a product of the carbon economy. The electricity that drives the servers and networks is powered, in the main, from greenhouse gas spewing fossil fuels. If the energy supply is disrupted, rationed or otherwise restricted the information flow could become intermittent and unreliable.

Does this mean that those responsible for the development of reference and information services should be extending disaster-planning horizons to consider such massive issues as the reliability of information provision in a greenhouse world? The sensible answer is probably a qualified “no”. For all but the largest libraries, the burden of detailed planning would be too great, and the risk too remote and distant. However, major library and information providers and companies offering reference and information services and products would be irresponsible to overlook such issues completely. In particular, is the model of disseminated information through networks that we have now come to depend on reliable and even viable in a world with runaway global warming? It is surely worth asking these questions. Should leading libraries and major information providers, perhaps coordinated by IFLA, jointly consider some of these questions and formulate plans that feed into other national and international efforts to prepare for the likelihood of climate change?

The climate, or at least the weather, is a preoccupation of Old Farmer’s Almanac, the free electronic version of which is the first review in this issue of Reference Reviews (RR 2006/351). It is the first of a good crop of reviews of electronic sources, another of which, Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (RR 2006/371) has a farming focus. Making freely available material previously published in printed volumes it encompasses 1,800 books and six journals mainly concerned with agriculture in North America. Black Studies Center (RR 2006/359) is a new subscription product from Chadwyck-Healey (now part of the ProQuest empire). Merging material from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library with International Index to Black Periodicals and full text sources, it is to be further developed through the addition of Black Literature Index and 1,000 dissertations. Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides Collection (RR 2006/396) is another new full text database providing access to out of copyright material, in this case items in the University of Toronto’s rare book collections. Also from Canada is Hinterland Who’s Who (RR 2006/380), not a listing of the great and good in the Canadian backcountry, but a database from the Canadian Wildlife Service covering species and habitats.

Music from the opposite end of the North American continent is the subject of Caribbean Popular Music: An Encyclopedia (RR 2006/388). One of number of new encyclopedias in the field of popular music from this publisher, it will be followed by a review of a companion volume on punk in the next issue. Our other musical reference is the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Mozart (RR 2006/387). The 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth has brought about a rash of publications on the composer of which this title and a bibliography from K. G. Saur, to be featured in a forthcoming issue, are two of most valuable. Sitting alongside these reviews in the Arts section is Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography (RR 2006/389), an important new three volume set from Routledge that will be an important information source on photography and related areas for all larger libraries.

Routledge are also responsible for another major set featured in this issue, the two-volume World Police Encyclopedia (RR 2006/364). Providing a systematic survey of the police forces of most nations, this will again be a standard source in the field. Other significant multi-volume sets covered include the three-volume American Indian Religious Traditions: An Encyclopedia (RR 2006/352), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature in five volumes (RR 2006/369), the three-volume Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia (RR 2006/375) also from Greenwood, and yet another Routledge product, the three-volume Encyclopedia of International Sports Studies (RR 2006/391). This selection, from a limited band of publishers, underlines yet again how multi-volume encyclopedias are becoming the province of the major reference players, those cited, plus a few others such as Thomson Gale, Elsevier and Oxford University Press.

Good things do not always come in large packages from the big names, however, and I’ll end this overview by flagging two modest but notable single volume titles. Bibliography of Westminster Abbey (RR 2006/353) is a specialist work produced by the Librarian of the Abbey and released by UK specialist publisher Boydell Press (part of the relatively small Boydell & Brewer group) best known for the Victoria County History series. Thoroughly reviewed by George Woodman, it is an example of how dedicated work by a lone scholar can produce an important reference work. Similar endeavour has produced The Literature Student’s Survival Kit: What Every Reader Needs to Know (RR 2006/372). From Ian Littlewood and published by Blackwell, it offers a unique assemblage of reference information relating to literature and will be invaluable to undergraduate students especially, as Stuart James points out in his review, to those lacking a grounding in the English literary inheritance. Perhaps there needs to be a survival guide for reference librarians, but one that looks forward rather than to our inheritance of Dewey, stacks and wood panelled reading rooms. I’m aware of a few texts that offer some helpful advice but none, as far as I know, tackle the global issues with which we began. A gap in the market?

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