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Many individuals experience a sense of déjà vu when smelling a particular scent in the air or on hearing a name or words from the past. At times even the faintest scent or sound may evoke old memories and stir the senses. This is particularly true when the names of long‐ago television and radio programs are heard. Depending on one's age and the part of the country in which one lived, people born before the “baby boom” years (1946–1964) often feel a profound sense of nostalgia about such radio programs as Mr. District Attorney and Fibber McGee and Molly or the television shows Howdy Doody and Toast of the Town/Ed Sullivan Show. These early programs are considered part of the “golden age” of radio and television broadcasting.

This index accompanies the index that appeared in Reference Services Review 16:4 (1988). As noted in the introduction to that index, the articles in RSR that deal with specific reference titles can be grouped into two categories: those that review specific titles (to a maximum of three) and those that review titles pertinent to a specific subject or discipline. The index in RSR 16:4 covered the first category; it indexed, by title, all titles that had been reviewed in the “Reference Serials” and the “Landmarks of Reference” columns, as well as selected titles from the “Indexes and Indexers,” “Government Publications,” and “Special Feature” columns of the journal.

Journalism is concerned with the reporting, writing, editing, broadcasting and the photography of news. Editorial or print journalism is limited to writing, editing and reporting and it is one factor in the ever‐growing list of diverse opportunities open to the modern day journalist. Photojournalism, radio and television broadcasting, editorial and newspaper cartoons, public relations and telecommunications are other aspects. All of these are part of “mass media” or “mass communication,” phrases that will be repeated throughout this article. Other areas considered part of the mass media are cinema, advertising, book publishing and sometimes photography.

Publishers are producing new reference sources on film at an astonishing rate. Each week reviews and advertisements appear to announce yet another book. Books vary in scope, subject emphasis, size, price, and of course, quality, and represent both new works and revised or added editions. Not only are American publishers active, but European firms are getting on the bandwagon, too.

While the spread of mass media culture in the United States has often been measured in terms of the number of television sets in each home, the camera and the photograph have been almost as pervasive. Once the province of the professional photograher or the special studio, cameras of the same type are found today in all but a very few homes in the United States. Even rarer would be a home without its collection of photographs to record the family's events, joys, triumphs and tragedies as well as the everyday mundane record of events.

What a difference a few years make! In the fall 1982 issue of Reference Services Review I described forty reference monographs and serial publications on photography. That article concluded with these words, “a careful reader will be aware that not one single encyclopedia or solely biographical source was included…this reviewer could find none in print…A biographical source proved equally elusive” (p.28).

The emphasis of this survey is on motion picture reference material that has been published since 1982. This update does not, for the most part, include titles covered in a prior RSR article (1:4; 1983), written by myself, or in an even earlier article by Leslie Kane (7:1; 1979). In those few instances where titles that have appeared in the earlier RSR film surveys are discussed, it is because they now have a new subject emphasis.

The nations of the world are linked together by increasingly fast, efficient and sophisticated means of communication. Satellites, cable, and other telecommunication methods are used to implement this mass communication. The mass media forms, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, film, etc., have influenced not only their resident population, they have the potential to influence all of us. The reference sources in this article are concerned with this global aspect.

The area of communication with its multistrand, interdisciplinary webbing presents a challenge to the bibliographer seeking to develop a collection. Describes a project at the University of Alabama in which a subject‐special policy was written to address the complex issues involved in collection, the format selected for use and the collegial working relationship between representatives from the College of Communication and the university subject bibliographer. Details the outcome of this investigation along with a description of the policy which outlines parameters for six fields of study — advertising, public relations, telecommunication, film, speech communication, and journalism.

It is obvious to many librarians that requests for information on funding sources are increasing in most types of libraries. Public support programs are dwindling, and corporate profits are receding. The publishing field has responded to this need by producing a new array of tools to help grant seekers find appropriate funding sources.