Using a unique approach to document the best journals across a wide continuum of disciplines, Stankus presents this book as the culmination of the Journal of the Century Project. The project gathered a group of thirty-two subject expert librarians to select the most influential and enduring journals of the twentieth century in their respective fields. Over the years, many others have produced core lists of journals in their respective fields; however, this is the only book that attempts to produce a highly discriminating list of journals, the crème de la crème, across a broad spectrum of subjects and covering the period of the twentieth century. The subject lists, which together contain more than 1,900 journal titles, are not meant to be all inclusive.
The book is organized into six “clusters,” which are further broken down into chapters that cover more distinct subjects. In some cases, a cluster collates disciplines that normally one would not think belong together. The clusters are: “The Helping Professions” (social work, education, psychology, sociology, and library and information science); “Music, Museums, and Methodists” (music, visual arts, anthropology and archaeology, philosophy, and American religions); “Business and Law” (business, economics, and law); “War and Peace” (modern history, political science, international relations, and military affairs); “Physical Sciences and Engineering” (basic sciences, mathematics, physical sciences, engineering, computer science); and “Life, Health, and Agriculture” (life sciences, medicine and surgery, pharmacy, physical therapy, nutrition, agriculture, and veterinary medicine). Each cluster is accompanied by two graphs, one illustrating a breakdown by type of publisher (e.g., for-profit, not-for-profit, university press) and a second one delineating percentages of geographic regions for publishers represented in the cluster list (e.g., United States, former British Empire, Dutch/Nordic/Germanic).
While the methodology for selecting their journals is not always conveyed and varies from subject to subject, most of the authors rely on a combination of criteria, including: historical influence, current dominance, citation analysis, review of published lists of core journals, faculty or colleague surveys, journal reputation, journal longevity, inclusion in significant indices, and the authors' own subject expertise and experience.
In addition to selecting the most influential journal titles, many of the contributors also chronicle the development of the journal literature in their respective fields. They write about the explosion in the number of scholarly and professional journals throughout the century, particularly during the latter half, and reflect the ever-increasing specialization and multidisciplinary nature of scholarly pursuits.
The listed journals are almost exclusively English language—with exceptions in the chapters on music, art, history, and mathematics—and are biased toward U.S. and Western European journals. Journals still prominent at the close of the century are emphasized more heavily than titles that may have been prominent earlier in the century but had lessened in significance by the end of the century. While some authors mention the growing importance of electronic journals toward the end of the century, online-only journals are excluded from consideration due to lack of longevity. The depth of treatment of selected journals is uneven across the various subjects. For example, the chapter on library and information science offers little more than a list of journals, while the author of the music chapter briefly discusses the history of each journal to explain why it was considered influential.
Of particular interest to medical librarians is the chapter written by Lucretia W. McClure, AHIP, on medicine and surgery, which includes dentistry. From more than 16,000 medical science and dentistry journals listed in the 1999 Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, McClure selects eighty-four as representative of the most important and substantive journals of the century. Other chapters include selections for the life sciences, pharmacy, physical therapy, and nutrition. Editor Stankus's chapter on mathematics and physical sciences offers an excellent overview of the development of scientific journals in general.
This book includes an index of journal titles as well as a subject index. This reviewer would have liked to see a journal title index by subject. The book is best when used chapter by chapter rather than read cover to cover. Those interested in the journal literature of a particular discipline can turn directly to that chapter as well as other chapters covering related fields. The bibliographies and footnotes are a rich source of core journal lists in the respective subjects and could be valuable to a librarian setting up a journal collection for a new subject on campus or to a collection development or serials librarian wanting to compare existing journal holdings to core lists. The book may also be useful to anyone interested in the historical development of the journal literature in a particular discipline, although the historical information tends to be broad and brief rather than in-depth.
Despite the publisher's claim in the prefatory pages that this is an “original book” (p. xiv), potential buyers should be aware that all the chapters were previously published in volume 39 of The Serials Librarian.