BBfAL hopes to fill the void left as Books for College Libraries, 3rd edition (1988) fails to see a fourth edition. It will be 10 volumes (plus CD-ROM) when completed in July 2003, with supplementary volumes to follow, plans for a website (access included with set purchase), and plans for a service that will electronically compare library holdings to the BBfAL database. A total of approximately 80,000 books will be cited entries consisting of standard CIP data, arranged by LC classification. The volumes are to be sold individually or as a set. Volume 1 has about 7,000 entries (about 12-20 per page in a legible, two-column format), beginning with LC classification Q (Science, General), bypassing classification R (Medicine), and continuing through to TX. Indexing is by author and title. Here is some background on this ambitious project from its editor: "The Best Books, Inc. began as a reprint publisher, and has been building our database of academic titles for over 20 years. In that time, we have consulted subject bibliographies, leading book review journals, and various subject librarians who helped determine titles that were most beneficial for both college and university libraries building their collections. We created this database to determine which books to reprint, which is our primary business, and The Best Books research project stemmed from there. The current Best Books for Academic Libraries project was developed to match our database with the knowledge of subject librarians from around the country. We enlisted their assistance with selecting the best books from our database (by LC Classification Schedule) and updating our current book list to represent the most recommended titles on every subject. In each case, we default to the recommendations of these area experts and encourage them to supply retrospectively omitted titles whenever possible. Our goal for The Best Books for Academic Libraries is to reach college libraries without the benefit of subject librarians and provide them with a research tool that will enable them to build their collections." Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Best Books for Academic Libraries

Reference

Library Reprints

See Book News comments for volume 1 (0-7222-0011-0) for background on the BBfAL project. Volume 2, on medicine, begins with Library of Congress classification BF (Psychology), skips all intervening classifications to go to R and continue through RZ (National Library of Medicine classification is not included). A total of about 3,000 titles are cited, arranged by LC classification and indexed by author and title. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

See Book News comments for volume 1 (0-7222-0011-0) for background on the BBfAL project. Volume 3, on language and literature (LC classification P through PZ), is the heftiest of the three volumes so far. Also, the type font is smaller than the first two volumes, and the pages have three, rather than two columns. Each page carries about 22-25 titles, for a total of approximately 18,000 titles. Arrangement is by LC classification and indexing is by author and title. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The Best Books for Academic Libraries: 004

Historical Geography of Detroit

History

Almon Ernest Parkins

Americas

History of Methodism in Wisconsin

BENNETT

P. S.

Christian Books & Bibles

A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas; Being an Account of the Early Settlements, the Civil War, the Ku-Klux, and Times of Peace

Biographies & Memoirs

William, Monks

Leaders & Notable People

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