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School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-An encyclopedia that includes 180 well-written, scholarly essays in 14 thematic sections. Each selection, averaging 10-16 pages, provides a historical overview of a period or aspect of American life and culture, or of the methods and approaches employed in studying it. Each concludes with a useful bibliography. Articles on slavery, racism, alcoholism, sexual orientation, and numerous entries on family life, popular culture, and periods of social change will be of particular interest and value to students. While the scope is broad, it is not exhaustive-the essay on ``Latin Americans'' discusses Mexican and Central Americans but not South Americans, and none of the articles under ``Ethnic & Racial Subcultures'' address the cultures of Caribbean Americans. Still, this is an impressive compilation. Clear print, see-also references, a complex table of contents in each volume, and an extensive index facilitate use.-Daryl Grabarek, Brooklyn Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHOICE Review
The editors, with nearly 200 contributors, have produced a monumental and extremely useful synthesis of American social history. They note that "the range of subjects and approaches is daunting," to which 14 thematic sections and 180 essays attest. Contributions by historians and scholars from ethnology, geography, literature, religion, anthropology, and sociology discuss the major issues such as gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, and sexual and political orientation that have dominated historical inquiry since the late 1960s. The section titles--Periods of Social Change; Methods and Context; The Construction of Social Identity; Processes of Social Change; Ethnic and Racial Subcultures; Regionalism and Regional Subcultures; Space and Place; Patterns of Everyday Life; Work and Labor; Popular Culture and Recreation; Family History; Social Problems, Social Control, and Social Protest; Science, Medicine and Technology; and Education and Literacy--convey the breadth of coverage. The longest section, reflecting the considerable interest in popular culture, includes essays ranging from sports, travel, and amusement parks to rock music, humor, and journalism. Other sections include essays on such theoretical matters as modernization theory, quantification, and poststructural theory. The typical essay runs 13 double-column pages and is followed by an extensive bibliography of books and articles as well as see also references to other essays. Maps, graphs, and tables enhance the text, and the essays on architecture and housing are accompanied by photographs. The 92-page index, in Volume 3, refers to both page number and column. It is extremely detailed, with extensive subheadings, and includes not only subjects, people, and place-names but also organizations and institutions and titles of songs, films, and books. The vast range of this work is revealed by a glance at the first column, where one finds entries for abolitionism, abortion, acid rain, acid rock, Acoma Indians, ACT-UP (Aids Coalition to Unleash Power), and Roy Acuff. A useful feature of the index is a footer on each page indicating the inclusive pagination of each volume. The 8.5-by-11 page size and sheer bulk and weight of each volume, one of which exceeds 1,000 pages, makes the set somewhat cumbersome to use. Perhaps four volumes would have been a handier format. The sixth title in the "Scribner American Civilization Series," this will undoubtedly take its place among the classic reference works in American history and should be acquired by all libraries. J. D. Haskell Jr.; College of William and Mary
Booklist Review
With the number of multivolume literature sources published by Gale growing almost every year, determining in which series a given author and/or title will be included can often mean going to several indexes. Although the Contemporary Authors Cumulative Index indexes most (but not all) of the Gale series, it is strictly an author index; those wishing to search for specific titles in the various series must look in the separate cumulative title indexes for each. Gale's Literary Index on CD-ROM attempts to solve this problem, allowing one to locate authors and titles in the 32 literary series published by Gale. The user's guide claims the work "combines and cross-references more than 110,000 author names including pseudonyms and variant names and over 120,000 titles into one source." Gale's Literary Index requires an IBM XT, AT, PS/2, or compatible (80286 or faster processor is recommended), MS-DOS or PC-DOS version 3.1 or higher, MS-DOS CD-ROM Extensions 2.0 or higher, 640K of RAM (512K available), and a hard drive with 1MB available space, although more space is necessary for temporary storage of information downloaded or saved. A color monitor is recommended, although not required. During the setup procedure, options for printing and downloading (to floppies or the hard drive) may be set, including a limit on the number of pages that may be printed. (There does not, however, appear to be a way to alter these settings after installation, short of deleting the program entirely and reinstalling it.) There is also a "Collection Tagging" option, where one can select from a list those Gale series that are held in the library. A message of up to 70 characters may be entered for each title, or one may accept the default message: "Available in this library." Unlike the printing/downloading options, this feature may be altered after installation. Gale's Literary Index is similar in appearance to Gale's most recent literary CD-ROM, DISCovering Authors [RBB My 1 93]. Both offer the same menu-driven ease of use as well as occasional quirkiness. One may search the Literary Index by author or title. There is also an extended-search option where Boolean searching and field searching are allowed. When selecting either the author or title search, a window opens at the beginning of an alphabetically arranged listing. The user may either scroll down the list or simply begin typing a word, with the list scrolling down as letters are typed. The author search retrieves an entry that lists all Gale series in which the author appears (though not specific page numbers), with a red letter A (on color monitors) appearing to the left of those titles that the library holds (assuming the collection-tagging feature was enabled). Following this is a listing of specific titles written by that author that appear in Gale series with the Gale volume(s) and page numbers on which the title is covered, again with a red A appearing to the left of those titles in the library. The title search retrieves a list of the various Gale series covering a specific title; the user may press J to jump to the entry for the author of the requested work. The title search appears to be limited primarily to the critical--rather than biographical--Gale series and, therefore, does not represent any new indexing. For example, although Gale's Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) series mentions many specific titles within the essays on each author, the printed work has no title index, so these volumes are not found in a title search of the disc. Title searches for Dracula and The Mayor of Casterbridge failed to bring up one citation to DLB, though each work is mentioned in its respective author's entries in the set. The extended-search option allows one to search by keywords in an author's name, keywords in a title, nationality, and a range of birth and/or death years. With the first three options, pressing F4 opens a word list that allows the user to check if a word is indexed before actually initiating the search. Boolean operators and truncation may be used in the extended search. Thus, one may search the author field for "MAZO AND ROCHE" to find Mazo de la Roche, rather than guessing how the name is indexed in the regular author search. Gale's Literary Index is easy to use, and few users will need to use the context-sensitive help screens (at the press of F1) or the help card included. (Unfortunately, as was the case with DISCovering Authors, the help card is two-sided, making it impossible to post at the terminal.) Nevertheless, the program has some odd features that not every user will catch. For example, the title-search screen revealed two separate entries for Great Expectations by Dickens--each bringing up different entries. A nice feature is that the titles in the title-search window are listed several ways, including with and without initial articles and with alternative or non-English titles. The help screen indicates that The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn will be listed in three ways: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The, Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of . . ., with any of the three retrieving the same record. Unfortunately, this is not the case, as Huckleberry Finn retrieves an entry citing World Literature Criticism, whereas the other two retrieve an entry citing Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Performing an author search would not have solved this problem either, as the Mark Twain entry lists the title under Huckleberry Finn and, 20 titles (four screens) later, under The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with different citations for each. This latter point brings up another oddity: initial articles are alphabetized in the title listings under an author's name. This would be forgivable if the same title were listed both with and without the initial article (as is true in the title-search screen), but this is not the case. Thus, there are nine entries listed before Absalom, Absalom in Faulkner's entry, such as "A Courtship" and "A Fable." The collection-tagging feature also presents some annoyances. If the user performs a title search that reveals the title is included in one specific volume owned by the library, pressing A brings up an "availability list" that lists all of the Gale titles tagged in the collection-tagging program--not just the one cited on the screen. Therefore, the user may have to scroll through several screens just to find, for example, the library's call number for Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. This is irritating, particularly given how other CD-ROM programs have context-sensitive collection tagging. Even worse, however, is the fact that the entire availability list will print out (or download) when a user chooses to print or download a citation. Gale's Literary Index will prove most valuable in those libraries that have the majority of the 32 series indexed. Depending upon the type of search involved and the amount of use the printed volumes receive at a library, the disc can be a valuable time-saver. Best of all, the software is easy to use, so most patrons should have no difficulty finding what they need. Gale should, however, work on the integrity of some of the data on the disc, as well as improve the collection-tagging feature. (Reviewed Aug. 1993)
