Canadian Books in Print 1999: Subject Index

Sarah Robertson is the editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

Marian Butler, the editor of these volumes, describes Canadian Books in
Print as “a reference tool intended primarily to bridge the gap
between Bowker’s Books in Print and Whitaker’s British Books in
Print.” The criteria for inclusion are the same for all of the
volumes. Rather than serving “as a complete bibliography of books
written by Canadian authors or dealing with Canadian subject areas,”
Canadian Books in Print is a compilation of in-print titles “bearing
the imprint of Canadian publishers or originated by the Canadian
subsidiaries of international publishing firms.” The 1999 edition
contains 44,157 entries, 3842 of which have a 1998 imprint; the 2000
edition contains 45,849 entries, 4176 of which have a 1999 imprint.
Government publications of general interest are included, as are
“French-language titles published by predominantly English-language
Canadian publishers … [and] titles from French-language publishers
outside Quebec.”

The Author and Title Index comprises a cross-referenced author index, a
title index, a publisher index, and a list of publisher ISBN prefixes.
The Subject Index comprises a cross-referenced subject list, a subject
index that includes all books in the Author and Title Index (some titles
appear under two or more headings), a publisher index, and a list of
publisher ISBN prefixes. Each subject in the subject list falls into one
of 13 key subject areas (amusements, art, business administration,
geography, history, information sciences, language and languages,
literature, music, religion, science, social sciences, and technology).

The editor of this valuable resource cautions that “absolute accuracy
in bibliographic detail” cannot be guaranteed because the lists “are
based on information supplied by publishers, mostly in advance of
publication.”