"...a mass of useful information..." - Who's Who review

 

Jenkins, Jon C. and Van den Bloock, Ceile (editors)
Who's Who in International Organizations: A Biographical Enclyclopaedia of More Than 12,000 Leading Personalities
K.G. Saur, Munich, 1992, 3 vols, ISBN 3-598-10908-3. £295. UK distribution by Bowker-Saur

 

Its subtitle tells us nearly all we need to know about this book. It is a typically thorough, detailed and accurate Saur production with a mass of useful information accumulated, clearly presented in a standard format and indexed in some detail. The first two volumes contain biographies, arranged A-Z, while Volume Three contains the indexes. The biographies are based on questionnaries and give brief personal details, membership of international bodies, career and similar details and a mailing address. Inevitably some are more voluminous and so more (or less) informative than others, but generally the publishers seem to have been successful in obtaining replies; even so, a fair number of entries comprise only name, international organization and mailing address.

 

The huge breadth of coverage of the work becomes obvious in looking at its indexes. Browsing through the names of organizations we find not only all the luminaries of the United Nations and similar bodies, but representatives of such as the International Association for the Study of Canon Law, the Nordic Association of Hairdressers, the World Esperantist Vegetarian Association and countless others. There are three indexes: by country, by profession and by name of organization. These are up to the usual Saur standard of thoroughness, except that the professions are rather general: how are we to extract the football officials from javelin throwers and the rest under "sports"; even more difficult, find the molecular biologist in more than ten columns of names under "science"? Also, while the editors are being helpful in putting the names of organizations into English as far as possible, as a result some are difficult to locate where the original or the acronym is better known even in English speaking countries: I eventually found FIFA under International Federation of Association Football; I am still looking for UEFA.

 

These are minor cavils: a huge amount of information is logically assembled and presented, so it should not be beyond us as librarians to be able to find it. This is another invaluable large-scale work complementing the Yearbook of International Organizations (Reference Reviews 91/338) and will be of interest to major general reference collections or to more specialist libraries dealing with international organizations and their representatives.

 

Stuart James