This title and The World of Learning are the two bibles of higher education, certainly in the UK and Commonwealth: they are where we turn however and whenever we need to contact another university for any purpose, anywhere in the world, and in an increasingly international environment at a time of unprecedented change. Complete, accurate and up‐to‐date detailed information is absolutely essential, and that is what is supplied by the two titles. It may be passing out of world political fashion but the Commonwealth still has a place in the lives and minds of many people throughout the world and still offers a convenient global grouping for purposes such as international higher education. Two levels of experience now inform this long standard work of reference: it has been compiled regularly over many years (this is the 74th edition after all) so that the editors know who is using it, what they want to know, and how to find and arrange the necessary data; there is now a second important influence, namely the imminent production of an electronic version which has called for even more closely predefined categorisation and more standardisation in the editing of the basic data supplied.
The strengths remain enormous. The coverage is complete for ACU members (which is all but a handful of Commonwealth universities); using the local definition of “university” in each country, the full range of nations is covered under the Commonwealth umbrella: Australia to Nigeria in Volume 1, Pakistan to Zimbabwe in Volume 2. The UK accounts for 500 pages of Volume 2 and our expanded university environment is comprehensively covered (omitting detail but giving heading information only for a couple of non‐ACU members). The UK coverage also extends to a few higher education institutions of university status but not title (Bolton Institute and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, for example, as well as Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, which has subsequently, in fact, become Queen Margaret University College). The information is obtained by questionnaire, which vouches for its accuracy and for being as up to date as circumstances allow. This questionnaire has evolved over the years both in terms of what the publishers ask and how the universities respond to it. The result is that overall a remarkable degree of consistency, accuracy and thoroughness is maintained. The occasional lapse is likely to be as much at the door of the respondents as of the editors, although I am uncertain how under my institution, the Department of Electronic Engineering and Physics, came to be listed as having “no staff at present” while, happily for Professor Chapman and his colleagues, they all turn up below under “Engineering, Electronics, and Physics”. Let’s blame a computer error!
The entries are now more structured (with electronic publication in view). They begin with a header of main address and chief officer of information (the university librarian being duly listed in that august band), then general information includes numbers of staff and students, types of courses, income etc. A new short section then presents an overview of the faculty/school structure (with names of deans), followed by the usual directory of academic units (namely, departments, research institutes etc). The lists of staff now only include professors, heads of department/unit and senior lecturers; while the omission of other lecturers will be regretted by some, pressures on space and higher numbers of changes occurring at that level mitigate the loss to some extent at least. Each entry is completed by a list of officers under standard function headings (Academic affairs, Accommodation, to Students with disabilities and University Press); names are repeated for various functions as appropriate (so, for example, I am listed twice, for Computing services as well as Library). I have noted before that the concentration on academic qualifications is logical in most respects, except that in the case of professional officers such as librarians (and quite a few others, too, including those in academic units in quite a few cases) it would seem equally logical that professional qualifications are at least as relevant as a first degree and its origin. Still, it is interesting for many reasons to check who graduated where.
At the end of each entry a brief note indicates the date of supply of information by the institution: my own, typically, was supplied on 2 March 1998 and the book was physically published the following February. Users may draw their own conclusions about that time span (and one of them must be that by no means all reference works are honest enough actually to specify how long the gap is between compilation and publication: the timespan indicated here is certainly not untypical). Whether an electronic version will enable the data to be even more up to date remains to be seen. On the credit side, we seem a conservative lot in academia (especially among our higher echelons now concentrated on) and the number of changes within that time is quite small.
The book’s prelims give us full information on how to use the work, lists of abbreviations and details and a directory of the Association of Commonwealth Universities itself. Appendices include ACU members of now former Commonwealth countries, specifically the People’s Republic of China/Hong Kong, inter‐university bodies and the fellowship and scholarship plans. Each country is prefaced by an outline map showing the locations of all the institutions included and the work is completed by the usual range of excellently comprehensive indexes: of institution names, of Website addresses (the key to keeping the data more complete and up to date? Not if those university Websites I know about are anything to go by), to departmental names, and to personal names. The result is not only an enormous amount of unique information but also ease in finding and consulting it.
Multiply all that by comprehensive world‐wide coverage and the result speaks for itself as a thorough, accurate directory of the universities of a significant proportion of the globe. It is natural for a reviewer to look at their own institution’s entry as an exemplar, but we buy this and use it to find out about colleagues and universities in other parts of the world where we do not otherwise have to hand the same knowledge or information as for our own neck of the woods. The Commonwealth may or may not last too long into the next century, but at practical levels such as this it will need to be replaced by something as effective; it has through 74 editions achieved much in terms of international academic communication; this is still, and will continue to be, a valuable (almost unique) part of that process, making this an essential work of reference.
