BOOKS: Animal Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2001:

Animal Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion, by John M. Kistler
Greenwood Inc. (88 Post Road West, P.O. Box 5007, Westport, CT 06881), 2000.

248 pages, hardcover. $39.95.
More than five years have elapsed since the most recent
previous publication of a bibliography pertaining to animal rights,
pro and con–and no previous bibliography included web sites as well
as printed material.

Thus John M. Kistler had a timely idea in assembling Animal

Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography, and Internet Companion: as
well as telling users what has been written, Kistler proposed to
give web addresses to obtain those writings, or reviews thereof, or
other relevant material.

But as Kistler admits in his introduction, web addresses
often change–and so does site content. The chief exception involves
material kept in permanent online archives, like those of ANIMAL
PEOPLE. While most web sites are more-or-less constantly updated,
dropping older content, archival sites offer today what they will
offer tomorrow, plus whatever they add.
Logically, Kistler should have identified relevant archivs
first. Instead, he didn’t mention most at all, and didn’t
distinguish the few he tripped over.
In addition, Kistler listed only books and monographs,
acting as if periodical literature and material created specifically
for the web does not exist.
Thus Kistler never mentions ANIMAL PEOPLE, in either printed
or electronic form. Yet each edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE includes
several articles relevant to animal rights which are longer and more
substantial than many of the campaign monographs that Kistler does
list, and our web site, <www.animalpeoplenews.org>, now at
5,000-plus pages, may offer more pertinant information than the
aggregate of the web sites for which Kistler gives coordinates.
Other periodicals and web archives are equally overlooked.
The result is a reference of quite limited utility.