ABES is a comprehensive reference source for anyone working in the area of English studies. It is a selective bibliography attempting to refer to relevant and high quality material. It covers secondary literature in English studies, mainly the four subject areas of language and linguistics, cultural studies, literary studies and film studies. These subjects are supplemented by media studies, women’s studies, the visual arts and the history of ideas.
The service employs the skills of more than 450 subject specialists worldwide who consider for inclusion material in many media, ranging from books to Web pages. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the service is the amount of detail contained in each record. The careful and lengthy annotations, in particular, give users a strong sense of the relevance of an item; often these items are graded according to their intellectual level. The database contained nearly 25,000 fully annotated records at the end of 1999.There is an ambitious aim to add 4,000 new records every year, and if this were achieved the ABES project would certainly be a worthwhile development.
In presenting this resource on the World Wide Web, Swets have very astutely concentrated their efforts on accessibility. The result is a highly‐effective search facility that is easy to use. The Web site itself is simple, with clear directions to users. There is an opportunity to avail oneself of a trial search, and I would recommend readers to investigate this.
