Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2008 - 61

book

reviews
in any of the topics it covers. Unfortunately it will probably not
be, simply because the book is so very difﬁcult to use.
Anyone with the courage to bring out a print bibliography in this age of on-line access to information is sooner or
later going to have to explain why. Research of practically any
kind nowadays begins with a Google search, or, for the very diligent, the search of an online library catalog. As more and more
books are digitized and absorbed into the Web, some futurists
predict it's only a matter of time before the library catalog, and
even the library itself, will be obsolete. Since it has apparently
become so easy to ﬁnd what's out there electronically, do we
actually need bibliographies anymore?
In my opinion reports of the death of the library are greatly exaggerated. I'm also pretty much convinced that we have not
entirely outgrown the need for bibliographies. Certainly no bibliography will ever provide the most recent information available, and it is evident that print sources are far less convenient
and ﬂexible than searches for data using the Internet. But the
availability of new ways of looking for things doesn't necessarily
mean the old ones ought to be discarded entirely. Information
looks different in different contexts. The best way to ﬁnd something might well depend on what you're looking for and why. A
good bibliography provides what amounts to a guided tour of
the information landscape. This might not be what is needed
in every research situation, but when it is, the Internet is not a
satisfactory substitute.
In practice, though, this puts a heavy responsibility on
the compilers of these tools. It is no longer sufﬁcient to simply make a list of the books, even an annotated list. Selection
criteria must be explicitly spelled out; annotations have to be
current and authoritative; and, crucially, the book has to be organized so people can ﬁnd out what's in it. Lemaire and Hainaux and their colleagues, for whatever reason, have not been
very attentive to these issues. The result is a book that seems to
be out of date before it even comes off the press, not because its
coverage extends only to the year 2000, but because it presents
its material with so little regard for the research environment of
its potential users.
The great strengths of this volume are its international
scope and its breadth of subject matter. It is common, and frustrating, to ﬁnd that often one of the ﬁrst restrictions American
publishers recommend for bibliographic coverage of an important topic is that the works chosen be in English. Including
works in ﬁve major languages is a refreshing departure. Subject
coverage is both broad and deep, covering all imaginable topics
of theatre technology in their practical, historical and theoretical aspects and in a wide variety of publication types. Reprints
and translations are included, as well as a generous selection
of exhibition catalogs. Even some dissertations appear, though

THEATRE

DESIGN

TECHNOLOGY

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they are not identiﬁed as such. Periodical literature is not treated, which is understandable, though it's a pity there is not even
a list of important journal and periodical titles. There is a single
index, by author.
In a sense, the strengths of the book are also its weaknesses. The editors have chosen to provide a separate section
for each language, creating in effect ﬁve separate mini-bibliographies. Each is arranged in the same way, into three broad
topics. Entries within each topic are listed in chronological
order by date of publication. Thus, in order to survey all of
the literature in a given subject area--costume, for example-a reader has to scan a minimum of ﬁve lists. It also helps
to be multilingual, since the annotations are in the language
of the publication. Because the subject categories are so few
and so general, to ﬁnd any book at all on a speciﬁc topic such
as lighting, or props, or a particular designer or country,
one has to ﬁrst determine which section (Theatre and Architecture, Stage Design, or Costume) is most likely to include
it and then read through the entries in their chronological
order to pick out the appropriate titles. It's hard to imagine
anybody actually doing this. The provision of a subject index
would have solved many of these problems in an instant, and
I am at a loss to understand why one has not been provided.
Certainly the challenge of devising a subject index in ﬁve languages is formidable. But any number of librarians were involved in the project, as well as representatives of OISTAT and
SIBMAS, and expert advice must surely have been available.
I'm sorry the compilers did not take advantage of it. The lack
of such a means of access is for me the most disappointing
thing about this book.
I began by suggesting three essential criteria for good
bibliographies. So far I've mentioned only two: selection
(looks pretty good) and access (not good at all). What
about authority? A reason to use an annotated bibliography
rather than some other method of seeking information is it
offers conﬁdence that someone who knows the works is giving reliable information about them. Here too, Lemaire and
Hainaux have made some puzzling choices. We are informed
that annotations will be provided for titles which are not selfexplanatory. But they have not always been supplied where
they are obviously needed. Original publication information
about reprints and translations is almost always lacking. The
notes that are present are unsigned. Though many are usefully descriptive or seem reliably scholarly, some look very
much like publicity. Without attribution it's impossible to tell
what's impartial and what isn't. The strangest editorial decision of all was to deliberately retain out-of-date annotations
("to reﬂect the book's historical context," they tell us). This
could have been interesting, though perhaps not for the gen-

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