Pac Books
A New Pacific Standard
A Hefty Encyclopedia Makes Its Mark.
The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Brij V. Lal and Kate Fortune. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 2000. P. 664. U.S. $115.
There has been a noticeable paucity of contemporary general reference books about the Pacific Islands. An interested observer or participant has had to rely on popular-market publications, such as Pacific Magazine, or region- or country-specific books (usually out of date), or Pacific-wide books that focus on a specific theme.
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The need for an up-to-date reference book has been an unmet. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. The publication by the University of Hawaii Press of The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia marks a dramatic step to fill the void.
This massive tome, edited by noted Pacific Islands historian Brij Lal and the well-known Kate Fortune, is nothing short of stunning. In an age of computers and television, this is a graphic-intensive encyclopedia that is extremely user friendly.
As with any encyclopedia, one gets a broad brush in coverage of subjects. The encyclopedia does provide further references, which are sometimes helpful but occasionally so esoteric (an unpublished graduate school thesis, for example, or a book published in 1946) that an interested reader would need access to one of the few libraries that specialize in Pacific Islands material to follow up.
But that is meant as a comment, not a criticism, of The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia. This hardback reference guide will become the standard contemporary reference for Oceania. It recalls the old Pacific Islands Yearbooks that used to grace the desks of anyone interested in the region.
If I have any criticism of this bold effort, it is a small one. The encyclopedia’s media section neglects to mention Pacific Magazine, despite our having been in business for 25 years! We can only hope those who organized the media section will rectify this oversight when the encyclopedia is updated.
And that brings us to a final thought about The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is only as good as its last update. Similar though significantly smaller scale efforts to do region-wide reference books have failed in the past because they have not been updated on a regular basis.
At $115 a copy, The Pacific Islands: An Encyclopedia isn’t going to fly off bookstore shelves. But it should be in the library of anyone with a serious interest in the Pacific Islands.
