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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

The newly emerging field of family violence has its modern origins in the early 1960s with the publication in 1962 of an article by C. Henry Kempe entitled “The Battered Child Syndrome.” This article captured the attention of professionals in medicine and the social sciences. Since that time there have been numerous articles and books dealing with the causes, treatment, and prevention of child abuse. Kempe has continued to work on child abuse and is Director of the National Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect in Denver. In editing books on helping the child and the family, he has collaborated with Ray E. Heifer, Professor in Pediatrics and Human Development at Michigan State University.

The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.

Do these reference requests sound familiar? “I need to know what has happened on this day in history. Can you help me?” Or, “I'm doing a paper on Thornton Wilder. He was born on 17 April. Can you tell me who else was born on that day?” Or, “Are any national or regional anniversaries coming up next Friday?” These questions call for a special type of reference work—a book of days. A book of days (or day book) lists important events that have occurred on each day of the year throughout history, and is arranged by month and day. These works often include not only historical, cultural, and literary events, but also the dates of the births and deaths of notable people, commemorative days of saints, and special anniversaries. A book of days, for example, can reveal that historians Will and Ariel Durant were married in New York City Hall on Halloween in 1913, or that Hart Crane and Ernest Hemingway were born on the same day in 1899 (21 July). This article will review some of the more useful books of days that are often found in reference collections—works that are uniquely suited to answer questions about each day of the year.

The following is an annotated bibliography of materials published in 1977 on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources. A few entries have a 1976 publication date and are included because information about them was not available in time for the 1976 review. Also some entries are not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the information.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked *, which may be consulted in the Library.

AT the close of the year it seems to be an impossible task to indicate the many‐phased activities it has shown in librarianship. There is the overall proof that despite all competitors the reading of books continues to increase. Statistics, for what they are worth—we believe them to be in the main quite honest and unmanipulated—are available for public libraries, town and county, only. The lending libraries of these put out nearly 385 million volumes, a figure difficult to grasp. That, however, is only one part, if the largest, of the reading of our people: commercial, technical, university, collegiate, learned society and school libraries play an enormous part in the reading of our people; and what the individual reader buys in the way of books the returns of booksellers might show but, even here, there are so many overlappings that any figures would be incomplete. Statistics which have no clear method and are subject to varying interpretations are valueless. What we do know is that we are a reading nation and there is the accompanying mystery that so many men and women seem never to have read a worth‐while book.