Under various titles this Chambers dictionary has been a mainstay of library reference collections for more than half a century. It was first published as the Chambers Technical Dictionary in 1940, re‐launched after a series of revisions in 1971 as the Dictionary of Science and Technology, renamed in 1984 as the Chambers Science and Technology Dictionary, and renamed once again in 1995 as the Larousse Dictionary of Science and Technology. Finally it returned to the Chambers brand when it was last published in 1999 under its present title.
This latest incarnation consists of rather more than 50,000 short – usually one or two sentence – definitions, occasionally with an illustration or formula, covering all branches of science, technology and medicine. According to the preface 2,000 headwords have been added since the last edition, particularly in the areas of molecular bioscience and information technology. These headwords are single words, phrases, trade and proprietary names, acronyms, and cross‐references, usefully allotted to one of 42 subject categories. The dictionary also contains 100 “in depth panels”, encyclopaedia‐like entries on an apparently random selection of subjects; some of very real current interest such as climate change, the internet, and nuclear reactors are included, but generally a more topical list would give the work greater value. Chambers is completed by 24 appendices consisting mainly of lists, including SI prefixes, the Greek alphabet, and Nobel (science) prize winners, 1950‐2006 – a small moan perhaps, but a complete list of winners would have been more useful.
The double column layout, with headwords in bold on good quality paper, is clear and easy on the eye, surprisingly so given the font sizes employed. At two kg in weight this is a bulky beast but still just about useable in the hand. Arrangement of entries is letter‐by‐letter, usual for dictionaries of this type, but I would much prefer word‐by‐word. The drawback of letter‐by‐letter arrangement is that word sequences are interrupted, so that, for instance, modelling, modem, moder (for those who do not know, a form of humus intermediate between mull and mor), moderating, moderation, moderator, and modern are mixed in with phrases beginning with the word mode.
Chambers claims to aim at an audience of students, professionals, and general readers, and although some entries will be understood by lay readers, many definitions require a level of technical knowledge and understanding. More realistically, the appropriate readership for this work is one of students and readers with some technical background. This work attempts to fill that that gap between general non‐technical dictionaries and more specific single‐subject dictionaries
Dictionaries must of course contain accurate definitions, but they must also contain those a reader might reasonably expect to find in them. In a non‐scientific experiment I looked for the definitions of ten terms, chosen nearly at random from across a range of subjects, which I would expect to find in a good science and technology dictionary. I found definitions of cp violation (physics), gustation (life sciences), dark matter (astronomy), organelle (life sciences), and phlogiston (history of science), but not of combinatorics (mathematics), condition monitoring (engineering), stereoselectivity (chemistry), or type theory (computer science). There was no definition of fast breeder reactor (engineering) although there was for the acronym FBR. Chambers therefore scored 5.5 out of ten, rather less than I expected.
Chambers' two main competitors as print one‐volume science and technology dictionaries, the McGraw‐Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (2003) and the Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology (Morris, 1992), each scored seven out of ten in this test. They are though much larger, both containing more than 120,000 terms and much heavier, both weighing in at about three and a half kg. They are also much more expensive at £95 and £77 respectively, and the Academic Press dictionary is in comparison now quite out of date. Whilst smaller, Chambers is an attractive, well‐produced, easy‐to‐handle work, and at £35 is very modestly priced. It is thus good value and deserves space on the shelves of any large or technical library.
However, a dictionary's most potent competitor these days is not another dictionary, but the ubiquitous internet, and Wikipedia in particular. The beginnings of many Wikipedia entries offer of a short dictionary definition. In his preface to Chambers, the editor argues that the role of a dictionary is to provide “crisp, authoritative definitions that are useful to a diverse audience … especially those not connected to the Web”. Crisp and useful are not properties restricted to printed dictionaries, and while I suspect that more people have home access to the internet than have a copy of a printed technical dictionary immediately to hand, for the moment at least most web sources lack the authority that an established publisher with a named and respected set of editors and contributors bring to a work of reference, and it is this credibility which gives dictionaries their continuing importance. That said, Wikipedia provided good, accurate, “crisp” definitions scoring 9.5 out of ten on the test set above. It might not be the whole future, and we should be mindful of its possible shortcomings, but Wikipedia is already a standard web‐work of reference to the Google generation.
