College and Research Libraries Book Reviews Directory of Electronic Journals, Newslet- ters and Academic Discussion Lists. Ann Okerson, ed. Washington, D.C.: Assn. of Research Libraries, 1991. 173p. printed; 3.5" IBM diskette (WordPerfect version), or 3.5" Macintosh diskette (Microsoft Word version). ARL libraries: $10; Other U.S. customers: $20; Foreign customers: $25. (ISSN 1057-1337). In the second half of the 1980s, schol- arly communication began to flourish on noncommercial international computer networks like BITNET and Internet. Per- son-to-person e-mail and file transfers gave the "invisible college" new tools for exchanging preprints and other infor- mation. Computer conferences, which are typically called "lists," significantly opened up the scholarly dialogue to in- clude a much larger and more diverse group of participants. Open subscrip- tion lists allowed anyone to contribute to ongoing discussions. Well-known and unknown scholars suddenly found themselves exchanging information and engaging in sometimes heated debate about the issues of the day. Information flowed freely and, in large lists, abun- dantly. As time passed, this collective effort produced both invaluable new in- formation sources and information over- load. The role of the "moderator," a person who could control information distribution on a list, gained importance. As lists grew more numerous, some scholars began to see the possibility of using the "Net" for more formal types of communication, and network-based elec- tronic serials were born. Electronic news- letters and special interest magazines appeared. More significantly, a handful of electronic journals emerged. Although the definitive history of network-based e-journals remains to be written, it is likely that New Horizons in Adult Educa- '() ' tion was the first refereed e-journal on the Net. This publication was followed by other e-journals, such as EJournal, the Journal of the International Academy of Hospi- tality Research, Postmodern Culture, Psy- coloquy, and the Public-Access Computer Systems Review. Some of these e-journals emulated tra- ditional print journals. Others created new journal conventions like single-arti- cle issues. Most of them were distributed in electronic form for free. All of them benefitted from the strengths of net- work-based electronic publishing, such as low production costs and rapid on-de- mand information delivery, and they suffered from its weaknesses, such as an inability to replicate the information rich- ness of the printed page with its color, illustrations, and typographical sophisti~ cation. As e-serials and lists on the Net proliferated, it became increasingly dif- ficult for users to keep track of them. There were a few electronic resources and services on the Net that provided limited directory information for users who knew how to ferret out and access them; however, coverage of e-serials was very incomplete and usually outdated. As is characteristic of the Net, two in- dividuals, Diane Kovacs and Michael Strangelove, volunteered their services to remedy this problem. Kovacs pro- duced a selective directory of academic lists. The directory classified them by their primary subject and provided, if available, brief descriptive information about them. Strange love created a direc- tory of e-serials that grouped them into three categories: electronic journals, elec- tronic newsletters, and HyperCard stacks, digest newsletters, and others. Editors of the e-serials listed in the directory usually wrote or reviewed the descriptions of their publications. 84 College & Research Libraries Recognizing the importance of these efforts to the scholarly community, Ann Okerson, director of the Association of Research Libraries' Office of Scientific and Academic Publishing, edited these two contributions into a low-cost direc- tory. (Kovacs and Stangelove' s directories are also available as free files on the Net.) The Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion Lists is currently the best source of informa- tion about network-based e-serials and lists. But it has some minor flaws. E-seri- als could be classified into more mean- ingful and discrete categories (e.g., scholarly journals could be separated from special interest magazines). Lists that are not "open" for user-initiated subscription could be identified as such. The list direc- tory does not include a number of com- puter-oriented lists. Nevertheless, the compilers should be commended for cre- ating this directory, and ARL should be commended for publishing it. It most use- fully simplifies the process of identifying and accessing appropriate e-serials and lists, thereby helping to open the frontiers of electronic information.-Charles W. Bai- ley, Jr., University of Houston, Texas. LOGOS: The Professional Journal for the Book World. London: Whurr Publica- tions, 1990- . Individuals: $52/year; Institutions: $80/year (ISSN 0957-9656). The contents page of each LOGOS quarterly issue carries a message from the publisher that begins: "LOGOS is written and read by book people in twenty-nine countries. It offers to the world book community a forum in which it can debate the issues which con- cern it and which both unite and divide it. LOGOS subscribers include librari- ans, booksellers, publishers, literary agents, authors, printers, designers and bibliophiles-all who are in some way involved in the writing, production, dis- tribution and reading of books." Certainly the journal's geographic cov- erage is impressive. Of the thirty-six ar- ticles published in the initial volume, for example, only one-third focus on spe- cific aspects of Anglo-American publish- ing; another third cover developments in January 1992 non-European countries; and the re- maining articles feature topics such as the effects of technology, the author I ed- itor interview, and preservation. Contribu- tions range from Hans Zell's explanation of the crisis in book publishing in Africa to John Sumsion's analysis of Public Lending Right, with views from publishers regu- larly included (e.g., Frances Pinter's ''The Independent Publisher" and Christopher Hurst's "On Being Small, Commercial, and Scholarly"). In his column, publisher Colin Whurr describes accurately the ele- ments he seeks for articles in the journal: "A typical LOGOS contribution mingles history, personal experience, contempo- rary analysis and a view of the future on its chosen topic. The focus is on meanings, not views. Experiences are interpreted, not merely reported." Carrying no news or advertising, this journal also avoids footnotes, academic jargon, book reviews, and single-theme issues, although contrasting views on a subject are occasionally juxtaposed in one issue (the second issue for 1991 in- cludes two articles on the Net Book Agreement, for example). Readers thus are free to concentrate on the eight or nine contributions in each issue, as well as an occasional editorial and an opinion column, including Martyn Goff's per- spective on the Nobel Prize for Litera- ture and Piers Paul Read's definition of the enemies of literature. More eclectic in content than Publish- ing Research Quarterly, LOGOS is also less academic; most articles are rooted in the contributors' experience, rather than in statistics or documented research. Yet the result is definitely not the typical "how we do it good" potpourri found in too many specialist periodicals. The au- thors try to place their views in the con- text of the universe of contemporary publishing and more often than not suc- ceed in tying a specific issue to a wider problem. Vic Gray's "Preservation vs. Use: The Archivist's Dilemma," for ex- ample, manages to tie local problems in Essex County, England, to the global scene with authority, clarity, and humor. If LOGOS is not a vital purchase for academic libraries-it is not scholarly, is