Bibliographic Indigence

Reviews the book, Student Mental Health: An Annotated Bibliography edited by Daniel H. Funkenstein and George H. Wilkie (see record 1957-08778-000). This is a collection of some 1800 items relating to student mental health. A bibliography in any field must fulfill a number of conventions. As the sonnet must first satisfy the structures of its form, so must a bibliography. The conventions applied to a bibliography are the canons of good scholarship. If they are present, the critic can then go on to appraise content. It is unfortunate that this work is so deficient in the conventions of scholarship, for its value is immediately open to suspicion by the critical reader. It is unfortunate that the authors did not subject their manuscript to more editing or examine the formats and plans of other scientific bibliographies in the behavioral sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)