466 Reviews

a monthly compilation of similar statistical data. The intended audience for the statistical abstract would be any academic reference collection, whereas China Statistics Monthly provides the level of detail needed by an economist or China specialist. Both of these reference tools are derived from the same SSB statistical sources, and their compilation is assisted by the China Statistics Archives, a research center of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Both are annotated to assist users who are unfamiliar with China's economic and social systems. China Statistics Monthly is available quarterly on diskette as well as monthly in paper.

The introductory materials for both works are similar, but the monthly edition offers more information. Both contain the same "Explanatory Notes" at the beginning, but the monthly edition also includes a "Table Guide" to explain the information provided by each table. As a bonus, the monthly edition also includes "Editorial Notes ," which focus on different topics each month. For example, the May 1988 edition includes a description of fixed investment statistics for China, their availability and usefulness. The monthly edition then provides a six-table "Trends in China's Economy" section to show past-year trends in employment, industrial output, retail prices and sales, exports and imports.

The statistical data included in each source cover similar topics, but the monthly edition provides more detail. For example, when the reviewer compared the table entitled: "Number of Staff and Workers by Sector," the monthly edition not only provided a monthly breakdown as opposed to an annual total, but also divided employment figures between state-owned units and urban collective-owned units, a detail not included in the annual abstract.

The annual compilation covers a broader range of topics by far, while providing statistics from 1978 to 1987. For example, the annual begins with a section called "General Survey," not included in the monthly. This section covers such diverse areas as administrative divisions, main indicators of national economy, total output value of society and national income, selected indicators of average daily social and economic activities and main economic statistics of 14 coastal cities for 1987. The annual also provides more tables on the labor force, although the monthly provides more detail in the statistics provided. For example, the annual has an extra table entitled "Number of newly employed persons in urban areas." Both sources have sections on agriculture, industry and transportation, postal and telecommunication services, though the annual edition provides more tables in all these areas. The "Investment in Fixed Assets" section of the annual is comparable to the "Investment and Construct ion '" section in the monthly edition, and the "Finance, Trade and Price" section is roughly equivalent to "Prices Indexes" and "Foreign Trade and Tourism" in the monthly. The "'People's Livelihood" section of the annual is an enlarged version of the "Household Survey" section in the monthly, and the "Domestic Commerce" section in the monthly provides such unique statistics as domestic sales of commerical units and major economic indicators of 28 grocery stores. The final section of the annual contains tables not included in the monthly. The "Education, Science, Culture, Public Health and Sports" section contains fascinating statistics on "Number of achievements in scientific and technical research" and "World sports records broken."

The annual compilation concludes with the "Statistical Communique of the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China on China's Economic and Social Development in 1987," an eight-page narrative summary that proclaims China's successes of the past year.

In comparing these two sources to some of the other well-known statistical reference books on China, they seem to fill a different and much needed niche within Chinese studies. For example, the two sources, The China Official Yearbook and China Facts & Figures Annual provide a more elementary and encyclopedic coverage of China, whereas China Statistical Abstract and China Statistics Monthly provide timely, high-level statistical data. Especially for the economist or social scientist studying current Chinese economic trends, these two sources from the University of Illinois at Chicago would be essential research tools.

LAURA LEE CARTER University of Colorado, Boulder

Boulder, CO 80309-0184 USA

CAB. Abst rac ts (compact disc). Wellesley Hills, MA: SilverPlatter. disc 1 (1984-1986) $2,500; disc 2 (1987-1989) $5,000, excluding hardware.

The long-awaited compact disc version of CAB Abstracts is now available from SilverPlatter. Produced by Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International, the database covers primarily topics in agriculture, which

Reviews 467

include animal science and production, agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, biotechnology, rural development and sociology, plant sciences, leisure and tourism, soils and fertilizers, food and nutrition, veterinary medicine, forestry, and entomology. The citations are to journal articles, monographs, government reports and documents, patents, dissertations and theses, conference proceedings, and generally include a comprehensive abstract. The origins of the abstracted research materials are international, and many languages other than English are represented. Related print publications number approximately 50 abstracting journals such as Horticultural Abstracts, Animal Breeding Abstracts, Nutrition Abstracts and Reviews, and Worm Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts. Two discs are currently available: a retrospective covering 1984-1986 and the latest, covering 1987-1989. Annual updates are planned with the first to be released in 1991 and to cover the indexing of 1990. The discs are searchable through SilverPlatter software on an IBM PC or compatible personal computer. A variety of CD-ROM players can be used to read these discs.

The SilverPlatter software provides flexibility of searching and is relatively easy to use. Knowledge of a few commands enables users to search for relevant citations, browse through the results, and then to print or to download to diskettes. These commands are selected from the screen with arrow keys and then by pressing ENTER or by pressing the first letter of the command. Function keys may also be used to select commands.

The FIND (F2 function key) command prompts the searcher to start keying search words. Free text searching with boolean operators is possible. The asterisk can be used to truncate a word; " f a r m * " searches " fa rming , " " f a r m s , " " f a rmer . " Phrases can be used such as "drip irrigation" or words can be placed in proximity using " w i t h " or " n e a r . " "Crops with rotation" searches for the words in the same field while "crops near3 rotation" searches for the terms within three words of each other in the same sentence. Terms may be limited to certain fields; "dogs in ti'" limits the search to the title field only. Additional fields such as language, publication year, or CAB abstracting journal code are used to limit search results.

Each search request receives a set number, (#1 , # 2 , #3) . These search sets may be recombined and additional search terms added to complete a search: " # 1 and # 3 and maize ."

The SHOW function (F4 function key) provides a display of the records that the searcher retrieved from the last set in FIND. The searcher may choose to display all or only selected fields of the records. Search terms are highlighted in each of the displayed records. After viewing the records, the searcher may select the PRINT command, or to download, or perhaps to return to FIND and revise the search.

There are three additional commands in CAB International that merit mention. First, the HELP command, which calls up help screens from the opening menu or at anytime during a search with the function key F1. There are 19 screens and it is time-consuming to go through them. They do, however, explain SilverPlatter commands and general search strategies quite sufficiently for a novice searcher. The GUIDE (F3 function key) provides information specifically about CAB. There are screens defining each field of the record (TI = title, DE = descriptor, GE = geographic), screens identifying all of the journal codes for the 53 CAB abstracting journals, and additional searching strategies. One very useful point is the reminder that British spellings are used as well as American. An example with the word fiber illustrates the number of records that are gained with the addition of the British spelling of the term. "Dietary and f iber" = 149 records, whereas "Dietary and f i b r e " = 640 records.

Finally, the INDEX (F5 function key) command is used to scan lists of all searchable terms and hyphenated phrases. Vocabulary terms from the CAB Thesaurus are listed and allow the searcher to select controlled vocabulary after viewing the number of occurrences of the term in the database and the number of records indexed by each tenn. Using controlled vocabulary from the INDEX can produce a search with an increased number of relevant citations.

CAB Abstracts on CD-ROM provides access to an outstanding and extensive array of agricultural abstracting journals with a worldwide focus. Teamed with the familiar SilverPlatter software, the database is searched easily and effectively. The database would, however, be more useful if updates were released quarterly instead of annually. Considering the costs of the discs and the coverage of the abstracting journals, this product would be of most value to large research libraries and agricultural research centers.

KATHERINE CHAMBERS Biological/Agricultural Sciences Department

Shields Library University of California

Davis, CA 95616 USA