The Encyclopedia of Earth and Space Science is a two‐volume print set or an e‐book. This review looks at the e‐book version. Timothy Kusky, currently a Distinguished Professor at China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, is the author of the entire work; Katherine E. Cullen is the editor. The encyclopedia is part of the Facts on File Science Library. This is a scholarly, well‐written work intended for an audience of high school students and college students taking introductory courses in geology, atmospheric sciences and astrophysics. I would add oceanography to the list. In fact, students in many basic science courses will find the encyclopedia useful and interesting reading.
Earth and space have violent and mysterious pasts and presents. On earth life has taken many forms in changing environments. Kusky has taken care to elucidate the connections between the physical world and life forms. He writes elegantly about mass extinctions: “For hundreds of years paleontologists have recognized that many organisms are found in a series of layers, and then suddenly disappear at a certain horizon never to reappear in the succeeding progressively younger layers. These disappearances have been interpreted to mark extinctions of the organisms from the biosphere”. The scientist's care to draw conclusions supported by evidence, the implied immense timescale and the phrasing “never to reappear” all combine to make the drama of science explicit. A student dipping into the encyclopedia might find an explanation of why it is thought that lead brought down the Roman Empire or an account of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Europe in 1755.
The work is mostly text with some colour or black and white photographs and diagrams. Entries average 2,000 words and cover scientific concepts, biographies of scientists and descriptions of the disciplines and sub‐disciplines of geology and space science. Each entry includes further reading suggestions which tend to be very much on the introductory side. A feature that will be useful for high school teachers is the matching of US National Science Education Standards for Content, grades 9‐12, to entries. Other very helpful features are the 13 appendixes covering a chronology of discoveries in the earth sciences, a technical glossary, the geologic timescale, the periodic table, the Greek alphabet, and conversion tables. A Cite capability has not yet been activated, but when it is, students will be able to cite an entry in the Chicago Manual of Style, Modern Language Association or the American Psychological Association's style.
In preparation for this review, I used Facts on File's Infobase Publishing platform. The encyclopedia is also available on the NetLibrary and ebrary platforms. While there are some positive aspects to Infobase's platform, in general I found it to be less user‐friendly than other e‐book platforms. Results are displayed only in PDF form, but an encyclopedia especially should have an HTML form, too. Browsing is awkward, as is moving between entries. Infobase does not take full advantage of the Web's publishing advantages over print, such as linking words in an article to the glossary, or linking index terms to the entry. Searching accommodates the asterisk as a truncation symbol, and the Boolean AND and OR. Fifty is the maximum number of search results displayed with no “more” option. One cannot tell from the results list which result is an entry rather than a more incidental appearance of the term. Search terms are highlighted in the results list, but not on the PDF full‐text, which means a second search is required to locate where in the text the search term is found. Searching entries from the Contents tab works somewhat more smoothly.
The interface includes Notes, Dictionary and Bookmarks tabs. Dictionary terms are from The Facts on File Student's Dictionary of American English which is a basic work. It is augmented by Appendix II, a scientific glossary. The Notes and Bookmarks are useful features that users who have created an account will be able to access.
