Babel Unravelled: An Annotated World Bibliography of Dictionary Bibliographies, 1658-1988 (review)

200Reviews Babel Unravelled: An Annotated World Bibliography of Dictionary Bibliographies, 1658-1988. 1990. Lexicographica Series Maior 36. Margaret Cop. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 195 pp. $71.15 U.S. This work is a listing of 630 sources of bibliographic information about dictionaries and other reference works that systematically list vocabulary units and give information about them. It provides a new and useful tool for various kinds of lexicographic research. The author compiled the bibliography as a doctoral dissertation at the Center for Dictionary Research of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, which is directed by Professor Franz Josef Hausmann. She is currently a member of the Center. She began work on the project in 1986, collecting references on cards. Toward the end of 1987, she realized that the size of the project required the use of a computer. She put the data collected into a personal computer and completed the project with it, including cameraready copy. The bibliographic software used was LIDOS 3. 1 by Doris Land Softwareenwicklung. Cop gathered the inventory in several ways. She conducted most of the research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; but she examined, when possible, publications not in the library there, by inter-library loan. She also visited libraries in other countries ofEurope and North America. To supplement information gathered in this way, she sent a questionnaire to national and major university libraries around the world, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. When she could, Cop located and examined the items obtained from secondary sources to check the references and obtain information for annotation; when this proved impossible, she attempted at least to discover and indicate where a copy ofthe publication could be found. When an item was not seen, Cop indicates this fact by a special symbol, a Greek phi (f). Such items were included, despite the risk oferror, to make the bibliography as comprehensive as possible. A bibliography should be comprehensive within its projected scope. Inevitably, as the author acknowledges, there are omissions. The surprising size of this work and the care with which it was compiled suggest that there cannot be many. A check in my file of twenty-three comparable items turned up only two not in Cop, and those unimportant. She invites continuing research : "If this bibliography succeeds in stimulating additions and corrections , then my goal will have been accomplished" (xi). A bibliography should also be accurate, and I have found very few errors . The only error in citation that I noticed was in the listing ofan item not seen: the Chinesejournal Ckhu Yanjiu is cited as Lexicographical Studies (item 316), because it was mentioned only by this translated title in the source, a bulletin for which I must admit responsibility. The work seems to be virtually free of typographical errors; I found only four, but I did not make a special search for them. Reviews201 The compilation covers the period from 1658, the date ofthe earliest bibliography found, to the end of 1988, with some additions from 1989 and 1990. The geographic/linguistic scope is global: bibliographies from all parts of the world were sought. The bibliographies included are chiefly published works, but a few manuscript catalogs and some databases are listed. Both individual publications and bibliographies published as part of another work, such as a periodical or anthology, are listed. To be included the latter had (as a rule) to contain either 50 items or 10 pages. Bibliographies may be general or specialized (e.g., of one subject, language, or author), and references to bibliographies of materials for language study are included when they contain a large proportion of dictionaries or supply useful references or information not otherwise included. Catalogs of dictionary or reference collections compiled by libraries, publishers, and booksellers, and more general guides to reference literature are also listed. So are periodicals that regularly publish reviews of new dictionaries; DSNA members may be interested to know that the Society's newsletter andjournal are listed, as well as being the source of several references not seen. The kind of reference work listed in the bibliographies described in this volume is referred to in the title of the work as a "dictionary." Cop points out...