An Eclectic Bibliography

Abstract

THE desirability of possessing lists of references, kept as up-to-date as possible, is apparent to every investigator, whatever the field of knowledge in which his interest lies. For the individual to compile his own subject index from original sources of information, an enormous amount of time and labour is required. It is the function of published ‘bibliographies’ to provide him with the required material in the form of references to original papers and, in some cases, as abstracts of the articles to indicate their scope. There are two requirements which a list of references must fulfil if it is to be of real practical value: it should be as complete as possible; and it should be suitably classified by subject. No bibliography, however specialised, is complete. No bibliography can be complete. In the restricted field of science alone, the number of articles published each year is probably of the order of one million, and these are distributed through some fifteen thousand current scientific periodicals (“The World List of Scientific Periodicals,” of which vol. 1 was published in 1925, and which was admitted to be incomplete, contained entries of more than 24,000 scientific periodicals in existence since 1900). Of this number of articles a comparatively low percentage is indexed in bibliographies. A great proportion is lost to those investigators to whom they would be of extreme use. It is true, of course, that the majority of articles of outstanding importance are mentioned in abstract or reference journals; but who is to determine the value of an article to an individual?

The Subject Index to Periodicals, 1926.

. Issued by the Library Association. Pp. ix + 278. (London: Grafton and Co., 1928.) 70s.