New face of Walford on the starter's block.

Byline: Bobby Pickering

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

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.