This 75th edition of the ACU’s Commonwealth Universities Yearbook will be welcomed by all its regular users. The Secretary‐General of ACU is Professor Michael Gibbons who writes a foreword to these two volumes. He remarks that there are 485 universities in membership of the ACU, all of which have entries in these impressive works of reference, and that there are contact details of 100 or so universities not in membership. He also mentions that new to this edition are the e‐mail addresses of most academic departments that have Internet access, in addition to the customary indexes of 2,500 institutions, the World Wide Web addresses of those universities with Internet access, and the 150,000 academic and administrative staff listed in the university chapters. Professor Gibbons also welcomes feedback from users in order to improve future editions.
The first volume covers Australia to Nigeria, and the second carries on from Pakistan to Zimbabwe, as well as having five appendices, one of which refers to previous members of the Commonwealth such as Hong Kong. These appendices are followed by five indexes, these being to institutions, to World Wide Web addresses, to academic units, to research interests and to personal names.
Regular users of these volumes will need no reminding of their contents, or of how to use them. But there are always new consultants coming along and, for the benefit of these, it is worth repeating that the inside front cover of each volume lists its contents in country alphabetical order, and under each country institutions are listed, also in alphabetical order. To give new users some idea of the information provided under each entry I opened the first volume at random. It proved to be p. 468, covering the Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada. Under this heading are its date of foundation, postal address, telephone and fax numbers, cables, telex and www. addresses. The chancellor, vice‐principals and administrative staff are listed, followed by general information, faculties, schools and academic units. Under each of the latter the names of the academic staff appear, together with their degrees. All this information about Queen’s University at Kingston takes up ten pages, each of three columns. That is why the ACU yearbook occupies 2,354 pages, since it covers nearly 600 universities and academic institutions throughout the Commonwealth.
This is indeed a monumental work of reference, reflecting great credit to the editors and all connected with its production. What else can be said?
