Here we review books and CD-ROMs in the following categories:
- Non-fiction titles by or about British journalists, including collections of articles, travel books, biographies and autobiographies.
- Source/reference books or CD-ROMs, and teaching guides.
Publishers with books or CD-ROMs for review should contact us at:
editor@journalismuk.co.uk
Financial Media Directory
A paper copy of the Directory costs £60 and a disk copy £35.
It's available from the ABI (Tel: 0171 600 3333)Finance journalists could find The Association of British Insurers' (ABI) new Media Contact Directory a useful reference tool.
The 1997 edition includes press contacts at organisations such as Age Concern and the Transport Research Laboratory, as well as ABI member companies. It also boasts contact details for over 300 financial journalists.
The Penguin Hutchinson Reference Library CD-ROMPenguin Helicon
£39.99
ISBN 0-14-088394-0Take seven of the most useful British reference books, put them on a single CD-ROM, add the facility to search them all simultaneously and you have The Penguin Hutchinson Reference Library.
Not only is Reference Library a valuable tool for all writers, but at £40 is considerably cheaper than the total cost of buying printed editions of its six titles - the Longman Dictionary, Hutchinson 1996 encyclopaedia, Roget's thesaurus, Hutchinson Compact Chronology of World History, New Penguin Dictionary of Quotations, Helicon Book of Days, and Usage and Abusage.
Each book is represented by an icon on the toolbar, and you can open any combination of titles at once. This is particularly useful when looking for a particular quotation or date, because the dictionary's 87,325 entries tend to swamp articles from the other books. Searching itself is a simple procedure confined to typing a word into the box - the program then automatically jumps to an entry in the 'Contents' list. Or you can do the same thing using the 'Find' facility, which retrieves all the articles containing that word and highlights every occurrence in the text.
'Find' is also activated by clicking on a word in any given article, which is potentially a very useful facility. However, it would be all the more impressive if it could be switched off at will, because it prevents copying paragraphs to the clipboard by selecting them with the mouse. Instead you have to click a button on the toolbar to copy the whole entry, which can then be pasted into a wordprocessing package or other application.
The ability to use Reference Library in conjunction with other software is probably its biggest attraction. Searches are activated from other applications by highlighting words and then clicking 'Contents' or 'Find' on a floating toolbar called the 'Library Manger'. The one puzzling inconvenience is that Reference Library must be closed or minimised on the desktop, otherwise you have to switch over to it manually.
Surprisingly, this isn't the only unforgivable software glitch. While all articles appear on clicking an entry in the 'Contents' list, dictionary definitions of "zydeco" and "zygote" simply fail to appear if you type in the word instead. And even more bizarrely, the article on Shakespeare's Hamlet refuses to be copied to the clipboard. It is to be hoped that Penguin Helicon offer a bug-free upgrade at little or no extra cost to existing owners.
For some, another disadvantage might be that all the titles are strictly text-and-picture affairs, and lack the more usual multimedia bells and whistles. But that's a small failing for a serious reference tool with British content, which includes a 'Trail' list so you don't waste time trying to re-locate articles you read earlier. Perhaps Reference Library's only major flaw is that it lacks a book of biographies.
Graham Southorn
A Journalist’s Guide to SourcesDavid Spark
Focal Press £14-99
398pp
ISBN 0-240-51470-XWant to find out about Tourette Syndrome, or speak to an expert on taxation? Look no further - David Spark’s A Journalist’s Guide to Sources contains telephone contact numbers for a large range of disparate subjects, from accidents to Zimbabwe.
Organised into seven sections, including ‘people at work’ and ‘the countryside’, it contains sub-categories listing addresses, phone and fax numbers of apposite organisations, plus a smattering of academic specialists. That, of course, might be a drawback in itself - the single expert on mad cow disease has probably taken his receiver off the hook by now.
While the meat of the book is phone numbers, there’s also a short but interesting appendix on investigative reporting, and a substantial introduction on where to start looking for information. Spark lists a number of authoritative reference books stocked by local libraries and newspaper offices, and explores what you can reasonably expect from sources like government offices, universities and specialist magazines.
In trying to be all things to all journalists, a book this size clearly has to be fairly selective and there’s bound to come a time when you find it wanting. Even so, there are some surprising omissions, like The National Film Theatre from the films section. And the chapter on Internet sources is similarly scanty, namechecking a handful of service providers and commercial on-line services but neglecting URLs for Web sites like Journalism UK.
The book’s biggest fault is its slim 20-page index, in which you won’t find names like ‘Tourette Syndrome’ and ‘Liberal Party’. Unless you have time to skim through each time you need a number, you’re forced to become familiar with its contents . That said, A Journalist’s Guide to Sources should be an invaluable first point of reference for trainees and non-specialist freelancers looking for leads.
Graham Southorn
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