Book Review Digest Turns 100!

The Library wishes a Very Happy Birthday to Book Review Digest, which turned 100 years old in 2005! A library classic for a century, the Book Review Digest

"provides excerpts from and citations to reviews of current adult and juvenile fiction and non-fiction. Over 7,000 English-language books are covered by the database each year. Concise, critical evaluations are chosen from 109 leading American, British and Canadian periodicals in the humanities, social and general sciences, as well as library review media. Covering a wide range of review media and offering an enormous variety of reviews -- all carefully excerpted to convey the diversity of critical opinion on a title -- Book Review Digest is the most convenient way for patrons to obtain information on prominent new books. "

The Alexandria Campus Library owns the complete series.

(pictured: Bruce Carroll, Technology/Circulation Librarian, with the most recent Book Review Digest from 2005, and Anne Anderson, Reference/ Instructional Services Librarian, with the very first 1905 volume).

A lot changes in 100 years. In 1905

• Only 14 percent of houses in the US had a bathtub
• Only 8 percent of houses had a telephone (land-line!!)
• There were only 8,000 automobiles in the US
• There were only 45 states in the United States
• The tallest building in the world was the Eiffel Tower