About the AuthorGuide to Current Indexing and Abstracting Services in the Third World By G. E. Gorman and J. J. Mills. London: Zell, 1992. 260 p. ISBN 0‑905450‑85‑X. $85.00.
The present work goes a long way to redress the balance, long felt to be unfairly weighted against publications from developing countries, in the degree of coverage given to the abstracting and indexing services published by these countries. It acknowledges that the ignoring of secondary information services produced by Third World countries only contributes to the information dependence and information poverty that plagues developing countries and reinforces the trend whereby information centres in these countries collect information only to supply it to abstracting and indexing services in developed countries.
Over 120 abstracting and indexing services are reported, originating from Third World countries (as defined in the text), and arranged alphabetically by title of service. In addition the services must have had the most recent edition published later than 1982 and must treat periodical, serial, or other documentation characterized by collective or multiple authorship (conference proceedings, workshop papers). The service also tried, where possible, to identify online, CD‑ROM and other electronic formats for the services. Services which are current awareness lists rather than indexes are excluded.
The data for each service are standardized to present: frequency and cumulation; subscription price; publishers’ name and address; issue analyzed; scope (in terms of types of materials abstracted and indexed); broad arrangement; main content (detailed arrangement of entries); assessment of content (the authors’ analysis of currency, breadth, depth and general suitability of the service). The latter consideration is especially well handled to take into account the often massive difficulties involved in producing these services in these countries.
An appendix lists 48 abstracting and indexing services which were located but for which copies were not obtainable, and for which online or CD‑ROM databases are identified where appropriate.
Produced as a complementary volume to Current National Bibliographies in the Third World, the present work fills an especially important gap in the bibliographic control of these Third World abstracting and indexing services.
Nick Moore is Editor‑in‑Chief, Library and Information Science Abstracts (London). His subject background is in chemical technology (B. Tech., Bradford University); he also took a postgraduate diploma in library science at Leeds Polytechnic. He served as Printing and Packaging Information officer, Watford College, before taking up his post with LISA. Interests reflected in his numerous publications include printing, packaging, and CDROM development.
© 1993 Dominican University
Citation
Moore, N. L., “Book Review: Guide to Current Indexing and Abstracting Services in the Third World” Third World Libraries, Volume 3, Number 2 (Fall 1993).