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Medical Book Reviewing
BY PATRICIA Y. MORTON, Head o Cataloging
George T. Harrell Library
Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
Pennsylvania State University
Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033
ABSTRACT now in its tenth revised version, provides invaluable
The large number of medical books published compli- guidance in selecting basic medical textbooks.
cates selection by medical librarians. Book reviews are a However, "it is not put forth as the ideal collection
potentially useful aid to selection. How available medical for every small medical library" [6]. The list should
book reviews are to medical librarians, as well as how be used selectively in many cases and supplemented
timely and accessible they are, were studied. Book reviews in most cases by other books to form a collection
appearing in 1981 in a select group of medical journals most useful to a library's clientele.
were studied, and questionnaires sent to book publishers Second, many publishers will ship individual
and the book review editors of the journals in the study. books on approval to libraries where in-house
SEVERAL FACTORScomplicate bookselection appraisal by appropriate specialists can be made.
for medical librarians. The number of medical However, an initial selection of books of probable
books published annually in the United States has interest must still be made, as no institution could
more than doubled in the last decade: in 1970, review in-house all the new medical books being
1,476 medical books were published or imported published.
into the United States, and by 1980 the number The third readily available aid to selection is the
had grown to 3,292. The preliminary figure for published book review, an evaluation of content
1981 is 3,142 [1,2]. The last decade also saw the and usefulness by a knowledgeable reader. Many
number of medical book publishers increase from medical journals carry book reviews as a service to
about twenty to about eighty [3]. The fact that their readers. How helpful can these be to book
there are many more publishers in the field may selection? The studies conducted by Chen [7],
help explain why books with very similar titles and based on data collected for the years 1970 and
coverage often appear together. These new books 1973, remain the most comprehensive as well as the
are of differing quality. Francis D. Moore, book most recent source of information on the state of
review editor of the New England Journal of the art of medical book reviewing. Chen stated in
Medicine, has observed that "some medical books the introduction to her book that "to utilize the
are downright worthless," and further, that "as available book reviews effectively, [librarians]
book prices rise, library circulation increases" [4]. need to know the current status of book reviewing
The great number of medical books published, in the fields of their interest" [7]. They also need to
their similar titles, their inconsistent quality, their have access to the book reviews that do exist. The
higher prices, the greater reliance by physicians on availability and potential usefulness of medical
libraries to supply books, and tight library budgets, book reviews to medical librarians were recently
all combine to make book selection a more arduous evaluated, and the results compared with the Chen
process than ever for medical librarians. Medical study where appropriate.
librarians must somehow identify books of quality BOOK REVIEWING IN SELECT MEDICAL
and usefulness in order to build strong collections. JOURNALS
However, few medical librarians possess the sub- Although Chen's studies used thejournal collec-
ject expertise to evaluate medical books, particu- tions of the Science Library of the Massachusetts
larly, as Davies notes, if the book seems well Institute of Technology and of the Countway
written and the author has "M.D." after his name Library of Medicine at Harvard University to build
[5]. data bases, the present study used the starred
Fortunately, several kinds of assistance are journal titles (those recommended for first pur-
available in selecting books. First, the Brandon list, chase by a small medical library) on the Brandon
202 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 71(2) April 1983
MEDICAL BOOK REVIEWING
list, on the assumption that they would be accessi- ty-five journals constitute a much smaller base
ble to most medical librarians. Most medical than that of the Chen studies, which included
librarians being hospital librarians, many in very fifty-four general biomedical journals and forty-
small facilities, it seems reasonable to expect that one clinical medical journals. Seventeen of Chen's
they are more likely to have subscriptions to these ninety-five journal titles are among the twenty-five
journals than any others. that comprise the basis of the present study.
The 1981 Brandon list included some fifty-four Calendar year 1981 was chosen as the period of
starred journal titles. Recent issues of these jour- data collection because it was the most recent year
nals were inspected and it was determined that for whichjournal issues were complete and because
twenty-five ofthem publish signed, evaluative book other relevant data are collected on a calendar-year
reviews (Table 1). Lists ofbooks received and brief, basis.
unsigned abstracts were not counted. These twen- Each 1981 issue of the twenty-five journals was
TABLE 1
PUBLICATION DATES OF BOOKs REVIEWED IN 1981
Reviewing Journals Year of Publication, No. of Books Reviewed Total Indexed
1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 ND*
American Family Physician 19 45 0 0 0 0 0 64 No
American Journal ofClini-
cal Nutrition 3 19 3 1 0 0 0 26 No
American Journal ofNurs-
ing 10 32 23 3 0 0 0 68 No
American Journal ofPsy-
chiatry 17 142 15 2 1 0 0 177 Yes
Anesthesiology 1 14 1 0 0 0 0 16 Yes
Annals ofEmergency Medi-
cine 6 19 5 1 0 0 0 31 No
Annals ofInternal Medicine 57 93 4 0 0 0 0 154 Yes
Annals ofSurgery 7 28 2 0 0 0 0 37 No
Archives ofDermatology 3 27 6 2 0 0 0 38 Yes
Archives ofNeurology 1 16 7 2 0 0 0 26 Yes
Archives ofOphthalmology 16 24 4 0 0 0 0 44 Yes
Archives ofOtolaryngology 3 18 2 0 0 0 0 23 Yes
Archives ofPathology and
Laboratory Medicine 3 60 15 0 0 0 0 78 Yes
Archives ofPhysical Medi-
cine and Rehabilitation 3 24 12 3 2 0 4 48 Yes
Archives ofSurgery 0 14 9 1 0 0 0 24 Yes
Arthritis & Rheumatism 1 12 0 0 0 0 2 15 No
Gastroenterology 16 59 6 0 0 0 0 81 Yes
JAMA 98 189 13 1 0 0 0 301 Yes
Journal ofBone andJoint
Surgery 16 54 11 3 0 0 84 Yes
Journal ofNervous and
Mental Disease 0 26 24 13 2 0 0 65 No
The Lancet 201 140 2 0 0 0 1 344 No
NewEnglandJournal of
Medicine 135 310 12 1 0 0 0 458 Yes
Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery 0 21 36 1 1 1 0 60 Yes
Radiology 3 27 5 0 0 0 0 35 Yes
Surgery, Gynecology, and
Obstetrics 3 15 3 1 0 0 0 22 Yes
Total 622 1,428 220 35 6 1 7 2,319
*Nodates.
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 71(2) April 1983 203
Y. MORTON
PATRICIA
scanned and its book reviews counted. Author, title, age time lag of six months to one year. In tallying
publisher, and date of publication were recorded the reviews, it was noted that reviews of books
for each book reviewed. Some review citations did published in 1981 generally began to appear in the
not include the book's date of publication. Missing third quarter. Chen found a mean time lag often to
dates were located in Books in Print, the National twelve months for reviewing of medical books.
Library of Medicine Current Catalog, and the
National Union Catalog. The few not found in PUBLISHERS WITH THE MOST BOOKS REVIEWED
these sources were recorded as "no date." A few
reviews were unsigned, a few were of periodicals, The publishers with the most books reviewed in
and a few were of older materials included pri- the study are shown in Table 2. Publishers ranked
marily to contrast with a new work. These were by the number of reviews oftheir books are listed in
excluded. Table 3. The major change from the Chen study
In 1981, these twenty-five journals carried 2,319 findings is the fall of Charles C Thomas. Chen
reviews of 1,814 books, representing 291 publish- stated that "it is obvious that C. C Thomas, Wil-
ers. This constitutes 58% of the 3,142 medical liams & Wilkins, and W. B. Saunders are the
books published in 1981. Chen's study found that major American publishers of both general bio-
"the fifty-four general biomedical journals studied medical and clinical medical books" [7]. In the
reviewed over 60% of the biomedical books pub- present study, Charles C Thomas ranked twenty-
lished and/or imported during the study period" ninth on the list of publishers arranged by the
[7]. The percentage appears to be about the same number of their books reviewed, just behind Har-
for the forty-one clinical medical journals [7]. The vard University Press and just before Elsevier.
much smaller data base in the present study yields The 20 publishers in Table 2 accounted for 1,287
a surprisingly high percentage of reviews of books (55%) of the 2,319 reviews. A total of 158 publish-
published as compared with the Chen findings. ers had only one book reviewed, generally once;
The journals carrying the most medical book apparently thejournals are receptive to good books
reviews are the general-interest journals: the New from smaller, lesser known, and nonmedical pub-
England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and lishers. At least two nonmedical books were
JAMA(Table 1). TheAnnals ofInternal Medicine
and the American Journal of Psychiatry do an TABLE 2
excellent job of reviewing books in their respective PUBLISHERS RANKED BY NUMBER OF BOOKS REVIEWED
specialties. Two of the ten general biomedical IN 1981
journals that Chen found to publish the most
reviews in 1970 and 1973, the Archives ofInternal No. of No. of
Medicine and the American Journal of the Medi- Publisher Books Novof
cal Sciences, published no reviews in 1981. Reviewed
TIME LAG Saunders 88 142
Williams & Wilkins 76 119
The time between a book's publication and the Wiley 62 78
appearance of its review hinders the use of book Mosby 61 68
reviews as an aid to selection. Although the large Grune & Stratton 60 85
number of books reviewed in the study and the Churchill-Livingstone 53 60
difficulty of ascertaining the precise date of release Plenum 52 76
precluded the calculation of that time lag in Lippincott 48 73
months, Table I gives the publication years of the Springer-Verlag 47 58
books reviewed in 1981 and illustrates some differ- Oxford University Press 45 62
ences in the response times of the journals. The Raven 45 59
Lancet was the with more reviews of Year Book 44 52
only journal Little, Brown 40 62
books published in 1981 than of those published in Blackwell 37 45
all other years, whereas none of the books reviewed University Park Press 37 43
in 1981 in the Archives ofSurgery, the Journal of Appleton-Century-Crofts 36 54
Nervous and Mental Disease, and Plastic and Lea & Febiger 29 49
Reconstructive Surgery were published in 1981. McGraw-Hill 27 33
Most books reviewed in the twenty-five journals in Academic 27 31
1981 were published in 1980, suggesting an aver- MTP 26 26
204 Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 71(2) April 1983
MEDICALBOOKREVIEWING
TABLE 3 ment. They also exhibit a few idiosyncrasies, such
PUBLISHERS RANKED BY NUMBER OF REVIEWS OF as sometimes filing titles beginning with "a" or
THEIR BOOKS IN 1981 "the" under the "a" or "the" and other times not.
No. of The alphabetical-by-title approach is the most use-
Publisher No. of Books ful for locating reviews of known books. This
Reviews Rvee method avoids problems when an author's name
Reviewed has become part of the title but the book in its
Saunders 142 88 present form is written by others, and avoids the
Williams & Wilkins 119 76 problem ofwhere to classify a book that pertains to
Grune & Stratton 85 60 more than one subject. It would be an added service
Wiley 78 62 to readers if the journals that carry book reviews
Plenum 76 52 would list them by title under a book reviews
Lippincott 73 48 subindex in their own journal volume indexes.
Mosby 68 61
Oxford University Press 62 45 SURVEY OF BOOK REVIEW EDITORS
Little, Brown 62 40
Churchill-Livingstone 60 53 As noted, the lack of timeliness in the medical
Raven 59 45 book review process remains a problem. To dis-
Springer-Verlag 58 47 cover why this situation remains unchanged, a
Appleton-Century-Crofts 54 36 questionnaire was distributed to the book review
Year Book 52 44 editors of the twenty-five journals in the study.
Lea & Febiger 49 29 Twenty-one were returned.
Blackwell 45 37 Except for one editor, who viewed book reviews
University Park Press 43 37 as filler, all the editors claimed that they published
Harper & Row 35 21 reviews to serve their readers by informing them of
Davis 34 22 what books were being published in their subject
McGraw-Hill 33 27
area and by aiding in their evaluation.
To address the problem of timeliness in medical
reviewed, the best selling novel The White Hotel book reviewing, the questionnaire noted that popu-
once and In All This Rain, a book of poetry, twice. lar review media arrange for their reviews to
Only seven books received five or more reviews in appear close to the release date of the book. To the
this study. There were 24 books with four reviews question of whether this would be a good idea for
each, 78 with three, 243 with two, and 1,462 books medical book reviews, ten of the editors responded
received only one review each. It is unknown in the affirmative, ten were generally negative, and
whether the books receiving several reviews each one did not respond.
are of interest to a wider spectrum of readers, are All respondents generally agreed on the three
perceived to be exceptionally good books, or were main reasons why this is not done. First, review
selected repeatedly for some other reason or by copies are not available early enough. Almost
chance. always, review copies of the finished book are
distributed after its release date, which makes it
BIBLIOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF MEDICAL BOOK impossible to have a review ready by then. With
REVIEWS respect to the difficulty of attempting to coordinate
Another factor in the availability of book reviews the two, Harriet S. Meyer, a senior editor of
is being able to find one when you want it. Chen JAMA, cited "multiple logistic problems. We have
stated in 1976 that "the need for a much more had problems in the few cases where we have tried
up-to-date bibliographic control tool for book this in the past. Best to ask the publishers' opinions
reviews in medical, scientific and technical fields is on this one."
strongly felt" [7]. That need remains. Index Medi- The second reason given for late reviews is that
cus does not include book reviews, nor does MED- reviewers are busy clinicians for whom book
LINE or any other bibliographic tool from the reviewing has a low priority and who necessarily
National Library of Medicine. take their time in getting thejob done. Many of the
Some medical journals index their book reviews editors stressed that they wanted their reviewers to
in their own volume indexes (Table 1). Of the ones give the book a careful evaluation and that this can
that do, some enter them under title, some under be very time consuming for busy people who do this
personal name, and some use a classified arrange- work on a voluntary basis. As K. M. Brinkhous,
Bull. Med. Libr. Assoc. 71(2) April 1983 205
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