The International Encyclopedia Of Communication

摘要

The editor of this encyclopaedia is right to say that communication is so dynamic, large, omnivorous, pluralistic, global, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and so full of theoretical and practical ideas and issues and applications, that defining and representing the field is in itself a major challenge. He refers to predecessors in this area, like Schement (2001) and Johnston (2003). In his introduction aspects of the challenge were representing plurality, finding a coherent system of terms, and ensuring that its quality was consistent and coverage truly international. These will be among the criteria any librarian will use when weighing up whether to subscribe to this new reference source. Reviewing such a work is no small task and, like eating an elephant, you come back again and again, and, like those blind men feeling an elephant, you get different perceptions of what there is. For most the first issue will be cost - can and should we afford it? - and this is likely to depend on the state of a library's current subscription arrangements with Wiley-Blackwell. This recent merger has affected access to Blackwell journal content. Links to Blackwell Synergy now point to Wiley InterScience, and talk in the trade is that everything will have settled down by the start 2009.