=Abbreviations of Publishers’ Names= will be found in the Publishers’
Directory at the end of The Cumulative Book Index.
=An Asterisk (*) before the price= indicates those books sold at a
limited discount and commonly known as net books. Books subject to
the rules of the American Publishers’ Association are marked by a
double asterisk (**) when the bookseller is required to maintain the
list price; by a dagger † when the maximum discount is fixed at 20
and 10 per cent, as is allowable in the case of fiction.
=The plus and minus signs= preceding the names of the magazines
indicate the degrees of favor or disfavor of the entire review.
=In the reference to a magazine=, the first number refers to the
volume, the next to the page and the letters to the date.
=Books noticed since the April number= have the month’s number
immediately below the author’s name in the entry heading.
=A Maltese Cross (✠)= indicates that the A. L. A. Booklist recommends
the book for small libraries, or for immediate purchase.
* * * * *
The publications, named above, undoubtedly represent the leading reviews
of the English-speaking world. Few libraries are able to subscribe for
all and the smaller libraries are supplied with comparatively few of the
periodicals from which the digests are to be culled. For this reason the
digests will be of greater value to the small libraries, since it places
at their disposal, in most convenient form, a vast amount of valuable
information about books, which would not otherwise be available.
We shall endeavor to make the descriptive notes so comprehensive, and
the digests so full and accurate, that librarians who do not have access
to the reviews themselves, will be able to arrive at substantially
correct appreciations of the value of the books reviewed.
This is particularly true in regard to the English periodicals, which
are practically out of the reach of the ordinary library, we shall
endeavor to make the digest of these reviews so complete that there will
be little occasion to refer to the original publications.