Review of The Personnel Bibliographical Index

Abstract

Reviews the book, The Personnel Bibliographical Index by W. H. Cowley (1932). This volume is a genuine contribution to a field of interest which has had almost a mushroom growth. Personnel work has not infrequently suffered from an impatience with the rather slow and on the whole rather undramatic application of scientific methods to bewilderingly complex problems. The present work will be a tool of first importance to the research worker and the administrator. Part I, the Subject Index, gives in fifty-six pages by topics the numbers of all references listed. In Part II, The Annotations, all references are listed by number, complete title, with brief annotations. Part III, the Authors' Index, however, lists the authors with the numbers of their respective references only in Roman type. The present reviewer would have liked to see the three-point scale of merit carried out here also, since this would have provided a simple means of providing a sort of Who's Who in personnel work with individuals arranged in order of merit. It is with distinct gratification that the reviewer finds himself in almost complete agreement with the author on the assumptions underlying personnel work in general and this bibliographical index in particular. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)