Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology (CD-ROM)Edited by Heinz Mehlhorn, Springer-Verlag, 2001, (? 170.00) ISBN 3 540 14825 6The preface of Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology sets its intent as a ‘comprehensive review of the facts and trends in veterinarian and human parasitology’. This CD-ROM extends from the single-volume text of the first edition, Parasitology in Focus (Heinz Mehlhorn, ed., 1988, Springer-Verlag), to boast >2000 entries, and comes close to fulfilling this claim.The illustrations are excellent; clear diagrams, countless detailed life cycles, beautifully crafted line drawings and electron micrographs of stunning clarity. The written content is of slightly more variable quality and often shows the joins of multiple authors contributing to different thematic aspects of the same entry. The authority of the text though must be beyond doubt because Mehlhorn rates no less than three mentions in the table of historical landmarks in parasitology, two more than any other parasitologist in history. However, I did worry when the table ran from pre-history to only 1993 which, given the publication date of 2001, shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the genomic age.I started by flicking through the sections and dipping in when a section caught my eye. Among many interesting snippets, I learned that bursa copulatrix was not the heroine of a James Bond movie, as I had previously thought. I then read with particular care the malaria section, of which I have some working knowledge of the current literature. Early in the section, I read the controversial, if not obsolete conclusion, that the pathology of cerebral malaria is caused by anoxia resulting directly from parasite sequestration. Within the space of a page, I had read a careful description of the complexity of the immune response around the same pathology. However, on balance, a student reading this essay would learn much about the field. This section may be of particular value to postgraduate students who have spent three years cloning a gene and now need to know something about the parasite they have been working on.The format of the CD-ROM was basic and workman-like – do not expect any multimedia pyrotechnics here. The two volumes have been rendered into a large Adobe Acrobat document, which gives page-by-page facsimiles of the printed version. Indexing is rudimentary – select a volume and a section alphabetically, and then click through until you find the topic you seek. References to other sections are helpfully cross-linked, but a good search program to target you straight to the sections of interest is lacking.The biggest question mark I hold against this work is its target readership. I am a fan of the previous edition, in which the preface states that its purpose is ‘to inform students, teachers and researchers about topics which may be far from their own working fields, but knowledge of which may be necessary to develop new ideas’. This philosophy was its key to success. The thematic organization meant that while reading, for example, about the immunology of Leishmania, you would be given comparative descriptions both obvious and obscure. Thus, a student would truly learn about parasite immunology rather than the immunology of a parasite. Parasitology in Focus was a readable student text, not a pure work of reference. Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology with its rigid alphabetical organism- and disease-specific entries, effectively excludes this ‘accidental’ cross-disciplinary fertilization. This I feel is a sad loss. In the preface, there is no mention of who is the anticipated audience and what is the purpose of the work. I believe that the first edition existed for a purpose, whereas the second simply exists. More is not always better.