The Facts on File Dictionary of Television, Cable, and Video

Defines more than 1,300 terms in the fields of television, cable, and video

From the authors of The Encyclopedia of Television, Cable, & Video (Chapman & Hall, 1992) comes this all-new dictionary. As the title indicates, it focuses on the interrelated media of television, cable, and video, although a few applicable motion picture-oriented terms are included, e.g., "Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences" and "letterboxing." Depending on the item's importance, definitions are short ("game shows," "slobcoms") or long ("Communications Act of 1934," "CD-ROM"). Not only are technical terms like "CCD" and "transponder" defined, but companies, organizations, and sociopolitical factors ("McCarthyism") are described when relevant. (Usefully, entries on the networks include historical background.) This reasonably priced title is recommended for public and academic libraries.
Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The premise of this dictionary is, on the surface, a simple one: to define terms from three overlapping fields of electronic media. What complicates the authors' work, however, is the invasion of terms from allied fields of communication. The authors include words and phrases from advertising; agencies, associations, companies, and unions; broadcasting and cablecasting; education and corporate communications; engineering; government and law; home video; production; and programming. They specifically exclude terms relating only to film; as they point out, "film practitioners have different perspectives and vocabularies. This is a dictionary of the electronic media."

Entries are arranged word by word. Words are defined in clear, easy-to-understand English. For example, letterboxing is defined as "a method of showing widescreen motion pictures in their original dimensions on television, and, with increasing frequency, on home video. Letterboxing is necessary because most theatrical motion pictures are shot in a format that is incompatible with television." See references are liberally provided (e.g., access has a see reference to prime-time access), and see also references are shown in small caps.

The Facts On File Dictionary of Television, Cable, and Video will be useful not only in libraries serving its intended audience of students and communications professionals, but--because of its clear definitions--in medium-size to large public libraries as well. Highly recommended.

@IMP = Net Games: Your Guide to the Games People Play on the Electronic Highway. By Kelly Maloni and others. Random, 1994. 272p. illus. index. paper $19 (0-679-75592-6).

@CAT = 794.8 Computer games--Directories||Internet (Computer network)--Directories

Move over Parker Brothers and Nintendo--games are now available on CD-ROM and online.

Games & Entertainment, a spin-off of Mecklermedia's CD-ROMs in Print, describes more than 1,300 game and home entertainment titles. It's hard to see how some of them, such as Newspaper Abstracts on Disc, qualify as entertainment, but libraries that don't own the parent work will want to consider purchasing this version for patrons wishing to find out about games like Myst and Dragon Lore, cookbooks, children's books, and gardening and sports titles on CD-ROM.

At any hour of the day, millions of people are online playing games. Net Games, from the same packagers as Net Guide (Random, 1994), is a directory to more than 1,500 games on the Internet and such commercial services as Delphi, GEnie, CompuServe, America Online, and bulletin boards. Games are arranged by type (e.g., shoot-em-ups, role playing and adventure, classic games like chess and Scrabble). Entries note difficulty, number of players, style of competition, if the game is played only at scheduled times, and if there is any extra fee to play. There is something here for everyone from crossword-puzzle addicts to Dungeons and Dragons fans. Sandy Whiteley