SCI/Tech reference review

1. Jones, J. Owen and Elizabeth A. Jones. Index of Human Ecology. London, Europa Publications Limited, 1974. 169p. $16.00. Here, at least as far as this reviewer is aware, is a unique approach in print to one of the broad interdisciplinary areas that is bringing so many interesting, and now and then frustrating, questions to our reference desks. Human ecology is tentatively defined by the authors as “the study of the interrelation of man and his environment,” but since humans have created each element in the record of human knowledge, there must be little if anything in that record that is not included within the scope of this definition. Yet most people would agree to the exclusion of some subjects‐astronomy, for example. The authors do not provide a concise, precise definition of their subject; hence each of us is left with his own somewhat vague notion of what the subject is, and each of us will probably disagree to some extent with what has been included, and what has not. Instead of defining their subject, the authors polled the members of the Commonwealth Human Ecology Council, and produced a list of subjects that overlap with human ecology. Their objective, which is highly commendable from the point of view of the reference librarian and his patrons, is to produce a subject index to the abstracting journals which cover these subjects.