1074 J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., Vol. 40, No. 4, 2000
BOOK REVIEWS
BOOK REVIEWS Sci/Tech Librarianship: Education and Training. Edited by Julie Hallmark and Ruth K. Seidman. Haworth Press: New York. 1998. 99 pp. ISBN 0-7890-0545-X. $29.95. Co-published as Science & Technology Libraries (1998, 17 (2)), Sci/ Tech Librarianship: Education and Training provides seven perspectives on the qualifications of a future science information professional. The book strives to envision the ideal education and set of skills for information professionals in the science and technology fields. Direct application of the included recommendations involves educators who can reform graduate programs in library and information science. However, current graduate students and information professionals will find the authors’ insights applicable to their own situations. The individual sections of the book include a personal history of science librarianship, the development of a specific science and technology (abbreviated as “sci/tech”) graduate program, the incorporation of the Internet into reference classes, and requirements or suggestions for specific subject specialists including engineering, geoscience, and health sciences. Gary Wiggins (Indiana University) authors a section on the education of chemical librarians and information specialists. He advocates the continued development of chemical informatics and provides a history of Indiana University’s response to the interdisciplinary nature of chemical information, especially in research institutions. Some details concerning the timeline for course development are no longer accurate; however, the goals remain viable. Despite the different topics of each section, common qualities emerge that, not surprisingly, any sci/tech information professional should have. These include subject knowledge, knowledge of sci/tech information sources, computer and Internet skills, and management skills. The importance of professional organizations and continuing education is stressed. Library educators, current sci/tech librarians and information professionals, and graduate students will find this book useful in planning for their own professional development and in shaping the future of the profession. Recommended for academic and personal collections.
Sarah George Illinois Wesleyan UniVersity CI000351X 10.1021/ci000351x
Fullerene Research 1994-1996. A Computer-Generated Cross-Indexed Bibliography of the Journal Literature. By T. Braun, A. Schubert, G. Schubert, and L. Vasva´ri. Advanced Series in Fullerenes, Vol. 5. World Scientific Publishing Co.: Singapore. 1997. 517 pp. 57.00 Pounds Sterling. ISBN 98102-3345-0. Like one of the previous volumes in this series (Vol. 3, ISBN 98102-2051-0, having as authors T. Braun, A. Schubert, A. Maczelka, and L. Vasva´ri, containing a bibliography of more than 3000 references for the period 1985-1993 in only 473 pages for triple the number of years), the present volume contains the following: (i) a bibliography (261 pp) with more than 4300 references ordered chronologically according to the alphabetical name of the publishing journal and having a four-digit ID number for each reference (all authors, paper titles, and institutional affiliations are given); (ii) an author index (37 pp) listing all authors without distinction between first and subsequent authors; (iii) a geographical and corporate index (29 pp) with the corresponding institute names, arranged in the following alphabetical
order, countryscitysinstitute name (addresses are not included); (iv) a partially permuted title word index (187 pp) in boldface letters (the ID number follows immediately when only one reference is involved; otherwise an alphabetical list of secondary terms follows, with corresponding ID-number(s) for the corresponding reference(s)). In this alphanumeric indexing, numbers are considered to precede letters, and Greek letters to precede Latin ones. Unlike the previous volume mentioned earlier, which contained also a collection of statistical tables and charts ranking the components of the bibliography (number of publications in each year, journals, authors, institutions and countriesscontributing substantially to the bibliography), the present volume does not include such a section. Instead, Professor Braun and his associates have chosen to publish recently a more extensive scientometric and bibliometric study in the journal Chemical ReViews. In their study, it was shown that the exponential increase of research results in the fullerene field is showing a tendency to slow down, except for the area of nanotubes. For future volumes, the present reviewer would like to suggest the inclusion of the language in which the papers or journals are published, when this language is not English and when, in one and the same journal, several languages may routinely be used. Instead of mailing addresses some journals nowadays request the e-mail address of the correspondence author. When this practice becomes general, such e-mail addresses will serve not only the readers but also the compilers of bibliographies, who may thus solve the problem of homonyms but may face the different problem of authors changing e-mail addresses. Actually, the most difficult problems for compilations and bibliographic key-word indexing are keeping track of synonyms and deciding which are the primary relevant terms. To take just one example for the latter problem, the use of Schlegel diagrams proved to be useful in graphically presenting fullerene structures, although as yet no canonical form for such diagrams has been agreed upon. In the index, however, the primary term is not “Schlegel Diagram” but the less evident term “Planar Schlegel Diagram”. However, the authors are to be congratulated for achieving an almost perfect Permuterm index. In competing with current bibliographic databases such as Dialog CASearch, CAS STN, or SciFinder, a printed bibliography has the drawback that it has always a longer publication delay relative to the current research data. On the other hand, there are several advantages, the first of which is that one pays only once for all bibliographic searches. Next, such bibliographies include all relevant items, and are free of irrelevant noise. Errors in author names and the spelling of terminology have already been eliminated, allowing a lucid, easily searchable and indexable compilation. Finally, hierarchical or permuted indexessas the very extensive geographical and corporate index or the title word indexsare powerful assets of the bibliography analyzed here. The “image at a glance” of the field provided by this volume and its predecessor might be made even more easily accessible if in the future a unified CD-ROM version of the integrated bibliography (plus a few more recent years) might be offered. In conclusion, the two computer-generated bibliographic volumes on fullerene research published by Braun and co-authors represent an extremely useful search instrument for all persons interested in obtaining a quick and easy entry into the fascinating field of fullerenes and congeners.
Alexandru T. Balaban Texas A&M UniVersity at GalVeston CI000352P 10.1021/ci00352p
