Booklist Review

Published since 1922 to meet the information needs of students at the upper elementary through high school level, Compton's completed a radical six-year revision of the text in 1989. Now, for 1992, Compton's has been completely redesigned and reset and extensively reillustrated. AUTHORITY. Compton's editorial staff is assisted by a team of 21 editorial advisors and approximately 500 contributors. Contributors are listed at the beginning of volume 1, along with their credentials and the names of articles in which they had a hand. As before, most of the articles are not signed. However, for this printing, the names of more than 500 contributors were added to articles, bringing the number of signed articles to 1,042. Many of the contributors are affiliated with academic or government institutions. Others are writers, editors, teachers, and librarians. SCOPE AND TREATMENT. Articles continue to be arranged alphabetically letter by letter. There are 23 new entries, including Animal Rights, Persian Gulf War, and Yeltsin, Boris. In addition, about 50 articles have been rewritten, or extensively revised, and more than 500 have been updated. About 120 bibliographies were updated, and three new bibliographies were added. Compton's consists of 26 volumes. The separate indexes at the ends of volumes 1-25, which also contained brief entries for topics not covered in the main alphabetical sequence, have been dropped, and volume 26, previously the "Master Fact-Index," has been renamed the "Fact-Index." The set is 694 pages shorter because of the elimination of these duplicate indexes. Almost 2,300 new short articles were added to the "Fact-Index," which functions, according to the editors, as a "miniencyclopedia" with 28,746 entries as well as an index to the set. Among the short articles added for 1992 are Abscam; Electronic Mail; Thomas, Clarence; Virtual Reality; and Voguing. Features that aid access are see and see also references, preview boxes that serve as tables of contents for longer articles, and fact finder boxes that refer the reader to related topics. CONTENTS. Some article revisions reflect a more contemporary outlook and a shift from a "how-to-do-it" emphasis. The article on guidance, now called Guidance and Counseling, is one that has been rewritten, or "critically reviewed, revised, and updated," by David Elkind, noted professor of child study at Tufts University and author of The Hurried Child. Whereas the old article emphasized vocational guidance, the new one acknowledges some of the contemporary problems that young people face: divorce, drugs, and the pressure to be sexually active. There is some discussion of the theories of Carl Rogers, B. F. Skinner, and other psychologists who provide some of the framework for guidance counseling. Games, Children's has been shortened considerably to make room for the new articles Games and Games, Amateur. The new article Games consists primarily of a fact finder directing the reader to entries on chess, football, and other games and sports. Most of what has been dropped from Games, Children's were instructions on how to play a number of games that probably would not interest young people today. The article Gardens and Gardening, as another example, was very much a "how-to" in previous editions but is now a survey of the various kinds of gardens. Among other articles that have been revised are Gorbachev, Mikhail, and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The article on Gorbachev is current through October 1991, when he proposed the economic union of several republics. The editors have added a brief introductory paragraph to the article on the former USSR noting recent changes and stating that the article deals with the Soviet Union that existed before the changes took place. The articles Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania make note of the recognition of their independence in September 1991. Population figures for all U.S. states and cities have been updated to reflect the 1990 census. PHYSICAL FORMAT. By far the greatest amount of change has taken place in the look of the encyclopedia, beginning with its new, bright royal blue binding. The entire set has been printed on four-color presses, which means that color can be used anywhere in the set. The entire text has been reset. Running text appears in a new typeface, with ragged-right margins. Captions were reset in a boldface italic type. All tables and sidebars were redesigned. All 22,500 illustrations were scanned and digitized, a further step in computerizing the production of Compton's. Over 1,000 two-color maps were changed to full color, and nearly 300 maps were added or revised. There are more than 2,000 new full-color photographs and more than 1,300 new full-color drawings, graphs, and charts. According to the editors, about 65 percent of Compton's illustrations are now in full color, compared with 35 percent in 1991. This compares with 80 percent full color for the 1991 World Book, and 75 percent full color for the 1991 Academic American. In addition, about 3,300 pages have been redesigned. Typical of some of the articles that have been newly laid out and reillustrated are Gardens and Gardening and Shakespeare. The old gardening article had 2 color and 10 black-and-white photographs. The new article has 10 color photographs, all new. In Shakespeare, the information is the same as in previous editions, but the presentation has changed. Many new illustrations, including a number of color photographs, have been introduced. More of the illustrations now appear in the top half rather than in the bottom half of the page. More space has been allotted to sidebars, such as "Chronology of the Plays," so that their appearance is much cleaner. All of the state and Canadian province articles have been redesigned, completing a process begun with the 1990 printing. New illustrations have been provided for many of the articles of interest to children, such as Circus, Doll, and Zoo, and for a number of the science articles, which are Compton's traditional area of strength. Birds, for example, now has more than 60 color photographs, along with numerous full-color illustrations to replace the pictures in the previous edition, which were primarily two-color drawings. The article includes several new diagrams, such as "Skeleton of a Pigeon" and "Perching Mechanism of a Bird." A preview box and a fact finder have been added, and the bibliography has been updated. Though the text remains largely the same, a few changes have been made to make it more objective. For instance, "The eggs of a bird are beautiful things" is now "The eggs of birds are white or a variety of colors, depending on the species." Not all articles have been reillustrated to the same extent. In some cases, such as Egypt, Ancient and Byzantine Empire, the reillustration consists of replacing a two-color map with a new full-color one. Egypt, Ancient would benefit from the addition of more color illustrations, since this is a popular research topic for children. Compton's is available in several electronic versions. Compton's MultiMedia Encyclopedia combines the text of Compton's with illustrations, animation, and sound on a CD-ROM. Compton's Family Encyclopedia, another CD-ROM version, offers the same text and illustrations, but no animation and less sound. Compton's Concise Encyclopedia is available for Data Discman, Sony's hand-held, battery-powered CD-ROM player. A compact disc-interactive version of Compton's is under development. While it led the way in adding graphics to the electronic version, until this year Compton's had lagged behind its counterparts in the illustration and design of the print set. There is no question that Compton's Encyclopedia benefits from its new design. The typeface is crisper and cleaner, and new page layouts make illustrations more prominent. Such articles as Directions, which used to have an old-fashioned schoolbook appearance, now appear much livelier and more up-to-date, despite the fact that most of the text is unchanged. In the past, the Board has made note of Compton's reliability and currency. Now Compton's has taken a big step toward enhancing its visual appeal as well. This attractive encyclopedia is recommended for school and public libraries and for home use. (Reviewed May 15, 1992)