College and Research Libraries new work that holds promise of systematiz- ing at least a part of that burgeoning litera- ture . Environmental Impact Assessment: A Bib- liography with Abstracts is an ambitious attempt along these lines. Specifically, the book seeks to order and explicate recent publications that deal with environmental study and evaluation as a decision-making process. The work is divided into five prin- cipal classified sections. The largest of these deals with assessment in the U.S. , Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, continental Europe, and selected other countries. Although there is attention to methodology both as theory and practice, the thrust of the work pertains to the legal bases and administrative processes involved in assess- ment. Together with the introductory mate- rial accompanying each section , this em- phasis bespeaks an intended audience of assessment administrators who already have more than a passing knowledge of factors in- volved in the process. Unfortunately , even these users might need ample fortitude to grapple with the book: the prose is dense ; the seventeen subsections lack internal clas- sification ; and, while the author index·is ex- cellent, the subject index contains only 367 points of entry and no cross-references . Furthermore, although each citation bears a unique alphanumeric designation , the lack of an alphabetic arrangement to the subsec- tions , and the.refore the alphanumeric en- tries , makes quick referral from either index difficult . This volume also raises an unsettling question regarding sales promotion . As noted , the work's subtitle is A Bibliography with Abstracts. The publisher's announce- ment that recently came our way elaborated on this by describing the book as a "single, comprehensive, annotated bibliography" that covers, among other things , "informa- tion sources, abstracting all major refer- ences (over 1,000 of them!) with critical comment where appropriate. " Indeed , the book does offer more than one thousand citations, all with full, clear bibliographic in- formation . However, only 55 percent (595) of these are annotated, frequently to an ex- tent unusual in bibliographies. The remain- ing 493 citations are altogether bare of sum- mary or evaluation. Nor are these unanno- tated citations evenly distributed over sub- Recent Publications I 165 ject areas . In seven of the seventeen sub- sections more than 50 percent of the cita- tions are unannotated. Unfortunately , two of these subsections are expressly devoted to assessment in the U. S. Although there are substantial numbers of annotated U.S. entries elsewhere in the book, users focus- ing on the U.S. experience may find the going difficult. Conversely, users studying the assessment process as it functions in the United Kingdom or continental Europe may find it quite beneficial to their investigation. In short, unlike most bibliographies, this work, while having reference value, will not lend itself readily to typical reference ser- vice in the college library. Its greatest value will probably be to the serious user who is compelled by need and blessed with time.-Patricia B. Devlin , University of Michigan , Ann Arbor . Li, Tze-Chung. Social Science Reference Sources: A Practical Guide. Contributions in Librarianship and Information Science, no.30. Westport , Conn.: Greenwood , 1980. $25. LC 79-54052. ISBN 0-313- 21473-5. This book is the outgrowth of a course syllabus and is intended to be the text for a one-semester library science course. In part I the author discusses the social sciences in general. Part II is made up of eight chap- ters, each dealing with one of the social sci- ences. The arrangement for parts I and II is similar: an essay by the author on the na- ture of the science or sciences followed by sections on access to materials , sources of information, and major periodicals. Part I includes chapters on government publica- tions , unpublished materials and data ar- chives, and data bases. Source materials are discussed in biblio- graphic essays with the standard, more im- portant items separately listed. The author's own alphanumeric designation for each item would be helpful to students in compiling class notes and book cards. The author has included with the standard material descrip- tive information that is accurare, if some- times superficial. The arrangement of the text and the style of presentation reflect the author's prefer- ences rather than a design for general use. Since the author has prepared the text pri- marily for library science students, much of 166 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 the information is introductory in nature. Those elements that make it valuable as a text tend to erode its value to the experi- enced librarian or researcher . The com- munication of useful information is further hindered by an obvious lack of good edito- rial work. Sentences are at times awkward and often overly long; the use of qualifiers is distracting to the reader who seeks at least a tone of authority in a guide to sources of information. Anyone wishing to use this as a text should examine it carefully prior to a pur- chase commitment. For others it is neither a substitute for nor a supplement to the more standard Hoselitz and White.-Joyce Ball , California State University, Sac- ramento. Hall, J. L. , and Dewe, A. Online Informa- tion Retrieval, 1976-1979: An Interna- tional Bibliography. Aslib Bibliography 10. London: Aslib, 1980. 230p. £16 members ; £19.50 nonmembers. ISBN 0-85142-127-X. This bibliography covers mainly "subject- oriented information retrieval from biblio- graphic files " and the authors make no claim to coverage of either computerized catalogs or numerical data bases. It spans the period 1976--79, which saw a burgeoning of literature in this field. Much of the increase in the literature is accounted for by articles written by or for practitioners as contrasted with an emphasis on research in earlier years. Although even the begin- ning date of this bibliography is quite re- cent, the field has changed so rapidly that already some of the material listed is only of historical interest. Because a number of rel- evant items were reported to the authors af- ter their cutoff date of June 1979, a sup- plement of more than 160 additional items was added without annotations and with only partial indexing. Adding the supple- ment brings the total to more than one thousand entries for the period beginning with mid-1976 and continuing through mid- 1979. Coverage is truly international. There are Publications from the United Nations The United Nations Disarmament Yearbook-Volume 4:1979 Reviews the deliberations , negotiations and actions during 1979 in the Unit~ Nations bodies, or under the auspices of the Organization, and in the Co~ttee ~n Disarmament. Among the current questions in the disarmament field are: non-prohferation ~f nucl~ar weapons and cessation of tests; prohibitio~ of nC?W weapons