Library and Information Science

On children's literature numerous discussions have been made and innumerable papers have been written in Japan. Children's reference books, however, have seldom been taken up. Although encyclopedias are the basic reference books and a large quantity of them both for adults and children are published, there are few guides good enouth for selecting the best ones. General consumers are unable to know even bibliographic data about the materials published as they are in the United States by, say, Reference and subscription books reviews and General encyclopedias in print. This fact largely depends upon the underdevelopment of evaluations and critical reviews in Japan and the methods for reviewing have not been established so far.

The main purpose of this paper is to present a bibliography of children's encyclopedias with critical annotations. Besides, this paper surveys the situation of evaluating children's encyclopedias in Japan and the United States, and describes problems encountered in preparing the bibliography. In conclusion, based on the survey, the author suggests realistic criteria for compiling desirable encyclopedias for children.