Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Featured as this month’s Reader’s Corner, the review for the 2nd edition of the Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction appears in the October 15 Booklist.
As previously mentioned, this is a classic readers’ advisory and staff development tool and the 2nd edition has been eagerly awaited by librarians and educators.

Does correct English usage matter anymore? There’s plenty of evidence that no one cares, but for those of us who do, there’s the third edition of Bryan Garner’s Garner’s Modern American Usage.  When Garner’s was first published in 1998 it quickly became a standard guide, and the new edition continues to man the barricades against assaults on good grammar, word choice, [...]

Another Reference merger!  And, good news that the World Almanac will move online eventually.
Infobase Publishing Acquires Iconic World Almanac Brand
New York, NY (September 1, 2009)–Infobase Publishing announced today that it has acquired the World Almanac imprint from Weekly Reader Publishing Group. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Being inundated with information about the life of Edward Kennedy over the last two days got me thinking about biographical sources.  What role does print still play in biographical information?  Is there even a place for it?
Every time I teach reference I include a couple of biographical questions; one about a living person, one a [...]

My favorite among the titles we’ve reviewed for the September 1 issue of Reference Books Bulletin is the third edition of Paul Dickson’s Dickson Baseball Dictionary. The baseball reference shelf is already pretty full, what with all those statistical compilations. But make room for Dickson, which is baseball’s answer to the  Oxford English Dictionary, containing an impressive 10,000 entries and 18,000 definitions [...]

Back in the day, at least 2/3 of my reference collection budget supported standing orders for hundreds of print statistical books, biographical sources, directories, dictionaries,and almanacs of all types.  Each year it seems to dwindle as we ask ourselves, do we really need to get that print source EVERY year?  This year is no different, [...]

The quintessential asterisked record was Roger Maris’s single-season home run record.  In 1961 he broke by one Babe Ruth’s longstanding record of 60, but in a season that was eight games longer.  Whether the asterisk was real, metaphorical, or not deemed relevant depended on which reference you consulted.  Maris’s record stood until Mark McGwire (in a race [...]

A classic reference title is now available online.  Gale/Cengage announced at ALA that the 17 volume Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia has been transformed to an interactive, media-rich online product (yes, this means subscription).  Touted as a knowledge portal, Grzimek’s will feature over 4000 species.  The online product will include audio tracks, maps, photos, videos, interactive [...]

This morning in the McCormick Center RBB hosted a lively and informative program, “Rethinking the Reference Collection,” in a packed room in the new West wing of the convention center.  Dave Tyckoson, head of reference services from Fresno State spoke from the academic libraries viewpoint; Barbara Bibel, reference librarian from Oakland Public Library spoke from [...]

Among the most requested of all books, and by far the most popular of reference books, in my Hamilton Middle School Library is Guinness World Records 2009 (published by Guinness World Records Limited in 2008).  Hamilton has about five copies of the dazzling hardcover edition that you might have seen prominently displayed near a checkout [...]

Apart from the even more distant twitters of certain insects and birds, I was introduced some forty years ago to a variant of the newly popular word in the form of Paul Klee’s 1922 painting Twittering Machine (in German Die Zwitschermaschine, in French La Machine a gazouiller).  Is it merely whimsy or does it echo the horrors of the First [...]

I have on my desk a copy of the eighth edition of Facts About the Presidents, one of those reference standards that belong in almost every library collection. The first seven editions were edited by Joseph Nathan Kane who, though he died in 2002 (at the age of 103), is still credited as the editor. That’s [...]