Samuel Johnson’s comment on viewing a library on 18 April 1775, as reported by James Boswell, was that
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to do is to know what books have treated of it.
Fewer and fewer people are now able to ‘know a subject ourselves’. Google and Wikipedia are increasingly first points of contact for reference queries, with Lynch noting in his Epilogue, ‘The Encyclopaedic Dream’, their dominance in the ‘postgoogluvian’ information world order. We should also remember, in an era where most information is sought and held online, the electronic fragility of the web. E. M. Forster’s 1909 classic short story ‘The Machine Stops’ comes to mind here. Like many later SF stories, it reminds the reader of an overreliance on the network ‘machine’.
Lynch, moreover, highlights the commercial manipulation of search result rankings in Google front pages, and that Wikipedia entries are often unbalanced in length and content. He notes Michael Jackson has, in Wikipedia, five times more space than Thomas Aquinas. Wikipedia entries work better for STEM subjects than for history and literature.
Libraries have played, and continue to play, a crucial role in facilitating knowledge access. Lynch notes, however, ‘we may be approaching the end of the year of the reference book’. The golden age for reference librarians was, however, pre-Wikipedia and Google. The iconic 1957 movie Desk Set portrayed the victory of smart reference librarians, led by Kathryn Hepburn, over the newly installed EMRAC, the Electronmagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator, installed by methods engineer Spencer Tracy.
Lynch reaffirms the continuing need for access to multiple sources of information, which historically were embodied in reference works. His 50 key reference works begin with The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient Babylon. His eclectic mix references The Doomsday Book, the Kama Sutra, Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack, The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies, the National Union Catalog and Schott’s Original Miscellany.
Between each of his 25 chapters, Lynch intersperses additional mini-essays, reflecting on a variety of topics, such as inter-dictionary plagiarism, literary societies and the work of lexicographers. In ‘Tell Me How You Organize Your Book’, he describes his own reference collection and its organisation.
Like reference works themselves, You Could Look It Up, is not intended for a continuous read, nor does it intend to provide a detailed analysis of historical and cultural trends. It is, however, a valuable and informative book, whose final warnings about living in an information monoculture are very prescient.
Australian National University
© 2016 Colin Steele
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00049670.2016.1242103