Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science

The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (until third edition in the singular: Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science) is an encyclopedia for library and Information science related issues. It was first published 1968-2003 in 73 volumes under the editorship of Allen Kent, Harold Lancour and Jay E. Daily. Second edition edited by Miriam Drake was published 2003 in 4 volumes, third edition edited by Marcia J. Bates and Mary Niles Maack came in 2010 in seven volumes and fourth edition edited by John D. McDonald and Michael Levine-Clark came in 2017 also in seven volumes.

Joseph C. Meredith published a “Review of Reviews,” summarizing thirty-nine earlier reviews of the first edition. His findings mentions “omissions, errors, inaccuracies, and inconsistencies; inadequate cross references; lack of uniformity of style; lack of balance in the length of articles; inadequate references and bibliographies.” He concludes that “although as an encyclopedia, the encyclopedia is a failure, it contains many excellent articles.”

James D. Anderson reviewed the 2nd edition. He found that "Regretfully, many of the problems of the first edition have been inherited, even exacerbated, by the second edition" and concluded: "This new second edition turns out to be not so new after all, especially with regard to the most basic articles. It cannot be recommended, especially for libraries that own the first edition. Overall, it appears to be a spin-off aimed primarily at making money rather than describing the state of the art in the twenty-first century. It reminds us of the drug companies that change the color of a pill in order to get a brand new patent."

The third edition has not been reviewed by the journals indexed by Web of Science (the publisher was unwilling to provide review copies to leading journals in the field). However, the editor-in-chief wrote about the scope of the work. Whether or not the fourth edition will be reviewed is to early to say. It should be warned, however, that the fourth edition still have the unethical procedure to reprint earlier articles without indicating that they are just unrevised reprints (some articles, so-called "ELIS Classic" are indicated as reprints, but many others, probably most, are not!). This is bad, of course, (1) because it provides a false impression of being updated and (2) because serious scholars should refer to the original, and when not indicated as being a reprint, citing authors have to compare the articles carefully with older editions.

These critical reviews and remarks should not, however, prevent users from utilizing this work: It contains many important articles. However, as Meredith (1980) suggested, it should be considered a collection rather than an encyclopedia.

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