Directory of Rare Book and Special Collections in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. By the CILIP Rare Books and Special Collections Group, ed. by Karen Attar

Abstract

The appearance of the third edition of the Directory is a major event for the UK's professional grouping of rare books librarians. The editor, Karen Attar, is highly respected in her field and this work has been a labour of love for her over some years. It is regrettable, therefore, that this reviewer has to question not just the content and format of this volume but the very rationale for its existence. When I started work as a rare books librarian in 2001, I was shown a copy of the second edition of the Directory in an early training session. Even then, in the early days of online reference sources, it seemed a somewhat old‐fashioned concept, and indeed I do not recall making use of the book then or since. Barry Bloomfield's second edition was published in 1997, just before the information world changed so utterly. Nearly twenty years later, what justification can there be for a third edition of a printed guide to collections of rare books around the UK and Ireland?