James L. Harner

“ Prefaced by an admirably clear statement of editorial principles and coverage and replete with evaluative, well-written, information-packed entries, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is the essential encyclopedia of the subject. ”

“ Entries are arranged alphabetically by author in three sections: literary dictionaries containing articles on genres, general and multiple genre studies, and works on particular genres. Since the last section is classified by German terminology for genres and forms, use of the trilingual genre index is mandatory. Many entries are taken from other bibliographies; both selection and classification seem based primarily on title keywords; and the extensive use of abbreviations, especially in titles, requires constant reference to the list of abbreviations. ”

“ Crime Fiction, IV is an indispensable guide to the subject but one that many users will avoid because poor design and inadequate search features make extracting information so needlessly frustrating and time-consuming. ”

“ Advanced Search offers additional ways of limiting a search: speaker, number and gender of speakers, place of first performance, director, theatrical company, designer, number of acts, ethnicity of playwright, and subject. Find Monologues allows users to search by gender of speaker, name of speaker, title, date of first performance, genre, subject, playwright, gender of playwright, nationality, ethnicity, and verse or prose drama. Searchers can also browse an author list of the contents of the database. ”

“ Although emphasizing novels, Fiction Core Collection includes some short story and novella collections. Pt. 1 is an author catalog, and entries include publication information; plot summary or list of contents; and extracts from reviews, literary dictionaries, or a publisher’s description. Pt. 2 is a title and subject index. Designed as a selection aid for libraries and thus emphasizing established authors, Fiction Core Collection is useful to the literary researcher needing to identify novels about a topic or representing a genre or literary form. ”

“ The quality of the entries and the breadth of coverage—geographic, chronological, and topical—make Encyclopedia of Life Writing an essential guide to the field.
Guides to Scholarship and Criticism There is no adequate bibliography of scholarship on the theory and practice of biography and autobiography. Given the interest in life writing, such a bibliography is a major desideratum. ”

“ With one exception, the 1,651 new entries are organized in the same divisions as Gothic II: Canadian literature has its own division. Users should note that each volume, inexplicably, is indexed separately by critics and authors or by titles of Gothic fiction. Despite these quirks (and the italicization of authors of dissertations and theses) , Gothic III continues to offer full, evaluative annotations (the value of which are compromised by the lack of a subject index) . ”

“ To obtain full details about a work, users must cut and paste from too many indexes; access would be measurably improved by conflating many of the separate lists, expanding abbreviations, and providing a basic search engine. Although not comprehensive and lacking full publication details for some entries, Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections: Combined Edition is the best single index to science fiction anthologies and collections published before 1984. ”

“ Columbia Granger’s search interface allows for a Quick Search (by author or title) or an Advanced Search (combinations of title, first line, last line, full text, author, gender, source title, and subject can be limited to full text, schools and movements, language, form [e.g., ballad, epigram] , historical period, and cultural identity) . Keyword searches of texts of poems frequently return several false hits since the interface does not allow exact matching. ”

“ A selective guide to reference works (in several languages and published through 1973) useful to research in the performance aspects of theater, dance, music, musical theater, film, and other entertainments. Entries are organized alphabetically in seven variously classified divisions for types of works: basic guides and general reference works; dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks; directories of organizations, institutions, and persons; play indexes and finding lists; sources for reviews of plays and films; bibliographies, indexes, and abstracts ”

“ Although Cumulated Fiction Index covers more titles than Fiction Core Collection, many subject headings are vague, the criteria governing selection are unclear, and entries unhelpfully cite only author and abbreviated title. ”

“ Literature of Fantasy includes primarily adult prose fiction published in book form in English. The first part is a list of novels and collections—as well as bibliographies—accompanied by summaries, with occasional evaluative comments, for novels and lists of contents for collections. ”

“ A Research Guide to Science Fiction Studies: An Annotated Checklist of Primary and Secondary Sources for Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: Garland, 1977. 165 pp. Garland Reference Lib. of the Humanities 87. A selective, classified guide to about 400 important bibliographies, reference works, biographical dictionaries, indexes, surveys and histories, studies of individual authors, and periodicals published in the United States and England through 1976. The annotations are only occasionally evaluative but usually indicate when a work supersedes an earlier one. ”

“ Contemporary authors who are not widely recognized are not included. Entries are classified by poet, then by title, with parts of books keyed to a list at the back (which also identifies volumes of journals searched) . The focus is explication; therefore, source, analogue, and most metrical studies are excluded, as are studies devoted to only part of a poem or books limited to one author. ”

“ Indexes 6,285 films and 145,131 separately published English-language novels, collections of short stories or novellas, plays, and poems of mystery, detective, suspense, thriller, romantic suspense, police, and spy fiction. Access is inhibited because users must navigate a series of cross-linked indexes rather than access a search interface (a result of the failure to divorce the electronic from the five-volume print version [Shelbourne: Battered Silicon Dispatch, 2003] ) . ”

“ Entries are organized by time period (prehistory and the ancient world; Roman empire—with each subdivided by geographic area) or by geographic area (subdivided by chronological period) ; within each subdivision, novels are listed alphabetically by author. Entries include a one-sentence summary that outlines the plot and identifies major characters, locale, any sequels or prequels, and series; a list of awards; and an indication of genre. Many of the summaries are apparently based on a review or publisher’s description. Appendixes list books by award and works suitable for young adults. ”

“ The space devoted to the superfluous list of magazines, anthologies, and collections indexed could be better utilized for fuller citations in the author and title indexes. Anyone consulting the title index must move to the author index and then to the list of contents to gather sufficient information to locate a story. ”

“ Science fiction anthologies have been included since the index for 1978–79 in Studies in Short Fiction 16.2 (1979) .
Guides to Scholarship and Criticism For an overview of bibliographies of secondary works on science fiction, see Hal W. Hall and Wendi Arant, “The Bibliographic Control of Science Fiction: A Quarter-Century of Change,” Extrapolation 40.4 (1999) : 304–13; for an evaluation of Web sites, see Arant and Hall, “Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Guide to Resources on the Web,” College and Research Library News 63.9 (2002) : 652–55. ”

“ An author index to 10,141 titles in various languages (including translations) by more than 4,855 authors in 2,094 collections published for the most part in the United States or England between 1900 and 2000. Plays are keyed by an awkward system of symbols to the list of anthologies. Two indexes: play title; anthology title. Concludes with three appendixes: authors by country, race, and ethnic group; women writers; authors by sexual orientation. Similar indexes include the following:
Chicorel, Marietta, ed. Chicorel Theater Index to Plays in Anthologies, Periodicals, Discs, and Tapes. ”

“ An appendix indexes entries for writers in the biographical dictionaries and handbooks listed by Bleiler (and cites selected author Web sites) . Although some chapters would benefit from a hierarchical, rather than alphabetical, organization, Reference and Research Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction—based on an intimate knowledge of the works listed—is the essential first source for anyone engaged in more than cursory research in the field.
Literary Handbooks, Dictionaries, and Encyclopedias L905 Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. Ed. ”

“ A collection of summaries of about 7,200 stories. Books are organized by author, editor, or title of anonymous work, then chronologically by publication date, with a separate summary for each story within a collection. Most summaries conclude with a brief evaluative comment. Three indexes: motifs and story types; persons; titles. Offering fuller but less discriminating coverage than Tymn, Horror Literature (below) , Bleiler is primarily valuable for its extensive indexing of motifs and story types. ”

“ Approximately half of the 4,191 entries are annotated, but usually with a brief sentence that rarely offers an adequate indication of content. Of the three indexes (scholars; poets; subjects) only the first is adequate: neither the poet index—essential to discovering studies that discuss more than one writer—nor the subject index, which utilizes unconventional headings, is thorough. Despite its shortcomings, Donow is a valuable compilation of the widely scattered scholarship on the sonnet. ”

“ Entries, which include a brief plot summary and production specifications, are keyed to a list of collections at the back.
The Web version uses a modified version of the standard EBSCO search interface (see I512) . Basic Search allows keyword searches of fields to be limited by grade interest level; Advanced Search allows users to search record fields as well as play title, book title, play author, book author, document type, subject, genre, number in cast, and audience level ”

“ MLAIB (G335) : General VII: Literature, General and Comparative in the volumes for 1953–55; General II: Literature, General and Comparative in the volume for 1956; General IV/Prose in the volumes for 1957–80; and the Literary Forms division and Genres/Prose section in pt. 4 of the later volumes. Researchers must also check the headings beginning “Prose” in the subject index to post-1980 volumes and in the online thesaurus.
Biography and Autobiography Research Methods L1275 Edel, Leon. Writing Lives: Principia Biographica. New York: Norton, 1984. ”

“ Results appear in ascending alphabetical order by playwright and cannot be re-sorted. Citations (but not the full text) can be marked for e-mailing, downloading, or printing; each citation includes a durable URL to the full text. ”

“ A Guide to the Reference Literature (Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1994; 244 pp.; Reference Sources in the Humanities Ser.) . Although some annotations offer brief evaluative comments, Simons is marred by inconsistent organization and coverage (especially of non-English-language resources) , omission of several important works, and lack of rigor in assessing key tools.
Some additional resources on film, theater, popular music, and broadcast media are identified in Barbara J. Pruett, Popular Entertainment Research: How to Do It and How to Use It (Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1992; 579 pp.) . ”

“ L1285 “Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, [1977– ] .” Biography 1 (1978) – . Title varies. CT100.B54 920′.005.
A selective list of studies, mostly in English, about biography, autobiography, and related topics. Works are currently organized in four author lists: books; collections of essays and issues of journals devoted to biography (with contents listed under both) ; articles; dissertations. In most installments, entries are accompanied by brief descriptive annotations. The lack of a subject index means that users must scan every entry ”

“ Bowker, 1995; 912 pp) ; cites many of the same reference works; and offers the same rigorously evaluative, comparative annotations.
Usually judicious in selection and pointed in evaluation, Anatomy of Wonder and Fantasy and Horror are the best guides to important scholarship and reference works.
Although now dated, the following selective guides remain occasionally useful:
Clareson, Thomas. Science Fiction Criticism: An Annotated Checklist. Kent: Kent State UP, 1972. 225 pp. Serif Ser. 23. The work remains useful for its inclusion of articles, which both Barron and Tymn (see below) omit. ”

“ Entrants are indexed in Biography and Genealogy Master Index (J565) . L1145 Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters: Oper, Operette, Musical, Ballett. Ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Sieghart Döhring. 7 vols. München: Piper, 1986–97. ML102.O6 P5 782′.03′31.
An encyclopedia of musicals, melodramas, ballets, operas, and operettas in the modern repertory as well as some works of historical importance. Although the work emphasizes European theater, there is substantial coverage of the rest of the world. In vols. 1–6, signed entries on about 3,000 works are organized by author, composer, or choreographer. ”