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Booklist Review

Updating the 1981 edition of this detailed, descriptive inventory of reference sources, this fourth edition contains 2,423 annotated citations of printed and computerized reference works in political science and related social sciences and humanities. This represents an increase of almost 700 citations from the previous edition and includes titles published up to December 1983. Holler gives a threefold purpose for this edition: (1) It serves ``as an educational instrument essential for systematic course work in political science, library science, and other academic disciplines''; (2) It is ``a ready reference guide,'' useful in ``libraries, offices, or at home''; and (3) It helps to manage and organize reference control of political information. The book is organized into three basic sections. Part 1 is an extended and sometimes confusing discussion of Holler's abstruse political reference theory that he has tried to incorporate into this bibliographic guide. Part 2 the main body of the book consists of the reference sources citations, covering general reference; the social sciences; American government, politics, and public law; international relations and organizations; comparative government and area studies; political theory; and public administration. The volume concludes with four indexes author, title, subject, and typology. The typology index is completely new to this edition; it identifies reference sources by their genre (abstracts, bibliographies, directories, encyclopedias, etc.). Included in this new index is a breakdown of the relevant databases in 18 online systems such as BRS, Dialog, Mead Data Central, and West Publishing Company. The citations are numbered consecutively and are listed in alphabetical order within each section of part 2 by the main entry. The primary bibliographic information is noted (but not the number of pages), and a descriptive annotation follows usually one or two paragraphs in length. Although this fourth edition lists many of the books that are in Walford's and Sheehy's comprehensive guides, it views these titles and the others it cites through the eyes of the political scientist, relating many of the behavioral social science disciplines and a few of the humanities to political science. It is an essential purchase for academic libraries supporting graduate studies in political science and high level undergraduate work in the field; it is also indispensable for large public library research collections. Libraries serving graduate students in librarianship/information science will also find this a very useful reference tool. Because of the increased coverage in this latest edition and the inclusion of a typology index, those libraries owning previous editions of the guide should replace them with the fourth edition.