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The publication rate and volume of bibliographies on women's studies in the past ten years have grown dramatically. As an interdisciplinary field of scholarship, women's studies covers a vast array of subjects. For this reason, most of the bibliographies being published are fairly specialized. That is, they cover specific aspects of women's studies such as history or education. The very excellent Esther Stineman work, Women's Studies: A Recommended Core Bibliography (discussed more fully below), which has a cutoff date of 1978, includes 90 bibliographies itself. This author has easily identified nearly 30 women's studies bibliographies published separately since 1978 and many more soon to be published.

At least three demographic trends in the twentieth century are having a tremendous impact on the patterns of women's lives. With increased life expectancy, reduced birth‐rate, and expanded occupational mobility, the life cycle of the American female has undergone great change. At midlife, many women today begin roles new to them—widow/divorcee, student, salaried employee, head‐of‐household are usually discussed. They may be confronted with new challenges—entering or reentering the labor force, returning to school, renewing old skills and roles—or may merely be struggling to survive. Rarely mentioned are the never‐married women and the fact that most people work because they must acquire the basics for themselves and/or for others.

When I was young, new students addressed me as “Miss Wheeler”; when I became middle‐aged, “Mrs. Wheeler,” while all around me they called men of all ages “Dr.” and “Professor.” When I was middle‐aged, I involved myself in a civil rights action; the administrator in charge of my department was referred to as “that nice young man,” and I sometimes as “the old bat” — there was a year's difference in our ages. By way of introduction to the topic of aging and females, here are four concepts to consider:

Five years ago a friend whose business has the word “women” in its title began referring to me requests she received for information about a large area encompassing women's issues, herstory, Women Studies, feminism, nonsexist education, nontraditional employment, reentry persons, comparable worth, health, portrayal of women in literature, scientific developments by and affecting women, etc. They came from feminist and sexist people of all ages throughout the world. Most, however, were American women attempting to bridge the information gap and to counteract misinformation and lack of information about and affecting females. This eventually evolved into a non‐profit service through which I responded directly to inquiries.

The purpose of this paper is to report on how early years practitioners worked with the ORIM Framework to support work with parents to promote early literacy experiences.

Co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) was used to develop and evaluate work with parents to facilitate their young children’s literacy. Information was gathered in discussion groups, interviews with parents and practitioners and feedback from all the parties involved.

Practitioners and families engaged with each other in the further development of an established literacy programme, and families demonstrated “ownership” of the co-produced knowledge after the end of the project.

Project design in co-produced research and KE is necessarily flexible. The focus is on practitioners’ knowledge and ownership of the process, sharing knowledge with parents and enhancing children’s experiences.

Practices that can enhance parental engagement in their children’s early literacy are varied and multiple and ORIM can be used flexibly to plan, develop and evaluate innovative and community – (and family –) specific practices.

Where parents have more knowledge of children’s early literacy development they are in a better position to support them; for learning communities there are implications in terms of future development of work with families to support early literacy development.

This paper contributes an original approach to the co-production of research with early years practitioners. It also identifies specific issues around the ethics of ownership in co-produced research.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Tenn. 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.

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

We've been living in a homogenous world, you know a world centered on and seen through the language perceptions of men. The consequences of this for everything that we take for granted, for all our assumptions are very deep. Feminism, in the sense I use it, is a radical complexity thought in the process of transforming itself. It is a kind of breaking open of not only the oversimplification but of the lies and the silence in which so much of human experience has been cloaked. Too much has been left out, too much has been unmentioned, too much has been made taboo. Too many connections have been disguised or denied. (Interview with Adrienne Rich, Christopher Street, Jan. 1977, pp. 9–16.)

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with orientation to library facilities and services, instruction in the use of information resources, and research and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the fifteenth to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1988. A few are not annotated because the compiler could not obtain copies of them for this review.