Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/422

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

402 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

issued. The titles of many works are to be found in the appendix, the most recent, of course, and the most valuable in other respects. For example : Sabatier's Esquisse d'une philosophic de la religion, with its valuable bibliographies ; L'annee philosophique, Stammhammer's Bibliographie der Social- Politik, Monroe's Bibliography of Education, Poole's Index, Campbell's Index Catalogue of Works Relating to India, Brook's Bibliography of Municipal Government, Galey and Scott's Guide to the Literature of Esthetics, Henshaw's Bibliography of Ameri- can Economic Entomology, etc. Users of the index will do well to refer to the supplement in nearly every case. Such reference is facilitated by numbering each entry in the index with the page on which the item would have occurred if included in the body of the work.

The first appendix is devoted to a " Systematic list of all the localities in the world which possessed a printing establishment before the nineteenth century;" the second to a " List of the general indexes to periodicals in every language ; " the third to a " List of the cata- logues of printed books in the principal libraries of the world."

Unquestionably these supplements contain valuable matter. I do not remember to have seen anywhere lists of places of publication, periodical indexes, or library catalogues which can approach them in completeness. The antiquarian bookseller, librarian, and cataloguer will make full use of these appendices and thank M. Stein most heartily. But, for all that, the worker in practical bibliography, for whom the book is, according to the introduction, more especially intended, will regret that so much space was used for these appendices, occupying, as they do, about one-quarter of the book.

Inasmuch as the book is not so large as Petzholdt's Bibliotheca bibliographica, and not nearly so compactly printed, one's curiosity is properly aroused to know how the author manages to add the bibliographies that have appeared since Petzholdt published his work in 1866, and still have room to spare for appendices. The author's policy is clearly stated in the introduction. " Every bibliography which has become old and useless has been systematically discarded. What good can come of swelling the size of a book with references which only lead the reader astray and cause him to lose time that might be employed to much better advantage ? .... All the explanatory notes in the text have been reduced to the lowest terms, and their brevity contrasts singularly with the long dissertations of Petzholdt which have appeared to me useless and, in general, little read The