Printed Reference Material and Related Sources of Information

This handbook has been designed to provide a concise and up to date guide to the various facets of reference librarianship. The core of the book is a series of chapters dealing with the various categories of reference material - dictionaries, encyclopaedias, directories, newspapers, periodicals, maps, atlases, reports, patents, standards, bibliographies, etc. The authors provide a critical evaluative commentary on the material that they have included. Emphasis is placed on the various formats available for each type of reference source. Each chapter of this new edition has been re-written and updated and the overall coverage of reference librarianship has been extended by the inclusion of additional chapters on community information, electronic publishing and audio-visual sources.