Health and Safety Hazards in the School Environment

Virginia Gillham is Associate Librarian in the Public Service Library at
the University of Guelph.

“This bibliography lists materials on potential hazards to the physical health and safety of teachers and students in the school environment. The materials included should be of particular interest to members of school health and safety committees. Section one contains references of a general nature to health and safety in the workplace, both in and out of school, and occupational health and safety legislation. Section two groups more specific materials under appropriate subject headings.”

Much research and effort have gone into the assembling of the information for this bibliography, and much useful material has been identified. That access to it should be hampered by details of arrangement and citation format is frustrating in the extreme.

Section one is arranged in alphabetical order by author with no attempt at subject access, yet this “general” section contains articles such as “Preventing health problems in pregnant women,” “Eye protection,” and “How work-place chemicals enter the body.” None of these items, nor any other of the 149 included in this section, can be found in any way except by browsing.

Insection two, a further 763 citations have been grouped into 13 very broad categories, with no attempt at cross referencing or more specific subject access.

Citations to monographs include details of publication and date: however, journal citations offer no such information. As a result it is not possible to identify Canadian as differentiated from foreign journals despite the fact that many of the latter are included. In light of the legal implications of the subject matter, country of origin is often significant.

For a future edition, the usefulness of this bibliography would be immeasurably improved if it were organized as a single list with a comprehensive subject index of considerable detail.