Resources - New face of Walford on the starter's block. The first volume in a major three-part upgrading of the Walford Guide to Reference Material goes half way to meeting the demands of a publishing world turned upside down by the internet. Bobby Pickering thinks it's a great print resource in search of a website.[QQ].

[PP] 43 [PL] UK

The New Walford Guide To Reference Resources Volume 1: Science Technology and Medicine (TNW1) is a weighty tome - an 848-page monster of a hardback, priced at a weighty [pounds sterling]149.95, that's designed to sit with authoritative gravitas on a library shelf. It covers 12 broad subject groupings in the STM arena: from mathematics, physics and astronomy to clinical medicine, engineering and information communication technology.

This latest volume has a specific aim to update the long-established TNW brand (first published in 1959) and refocus it "on the needs of newcomers to the various areas of STM, simplifying the book's subject arrangement, but at the same time considerably widening the types of resource described".

It's a daunting task, and I admire anyone trying to head-up such a print project in an age when the web has utterly transformed the playing field. Editor-in-chief Ray Lester cheerily admits in the preface that distilling the volume and wealth of resources now accessible down to a "starter pack" of a few thousand items in each area has been "rather challenging". And he adds that "no doubt we will have been more successful in some subject areas rather than others". But it's a brave effort, and one that has its rewards.

But first, let's just reflect on this web issue. For a starter, browsing through some of the succinct and useful abstracts of books, professional societies, portals, directories and manuals, you can sometimes be tripped up by data that seems a tad out of date. For instance, The Encyclopedia of Geology, we are informed, is "a well publicised five-volume reference work to be published in November 2004".

Inherent data obsolescence due to publishing timeframes is a problem Lester acknowledges. "Most research for this volume was carried out in mid-2004, however all URLs were checked in April 2005," he says. Aside from sparing a thought for the poor researchers who checked that the links were all active, I couldn't help wondering what else might have changed in the interim.

Many of the websites and resources reviewed in mid-2004 will have been enhanced, upgraded and expanded. In a further year's time how intact and relevant will some of these abstracts be?