Introductory remarks

The following paragraphs are intended to serve as a background to an annotated enumeration of the principal general retrospective botanical bibliographies, indices and abstracting journals in print, as well as printed library catalogues most likely to be consulted in a search for floristic literature references – particularly in areas not effectively covered by regional source bibliographies and indices. Not included here are general taxonomic works, as these have been dealt with under Division 0 and moreover are described in greater or lesser detail in standard textbooks and other introductory accounts.

Records of floristic literature

With the movement of the last decade or so towards widespread use of on-line bibliographic search tools, it may properly be asked: why concern oneself with traditional print? The researcher primarily concerned with the description or analysis of structures and processes would by now probably find most, if not all, of his sources through computerized databases as well as by following citation trails from article to article. Relatively few sources would in the end be more than, say, 10 years old, and recourse to those bibliographies and indices (or parts thereof) available purely in print would rarely be necessary. On the other hand, floristic botany is not only spatially but also historically based, as is the literature of record in natural history, ethnobiology, uses of biota, evolution, and biodiversity in general. Most on-line bibliographic databases do not at present go back earlier than the late 1960s (with fulltext journals first appearing in the 1990s), and as yet there has not been a general movement in biology for retrospective conversion of indices, monographic bibliographies, or full texts even of the more important journals.