BIOLOGY RESOURCES IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE. By Judith A Bazler. Greenwood Press pound;28.99 www.greenwood.com
As an aid to navigating the internet, Biology Resources In The Electronic Age aims to cut through the chaos and allow people to quickly and easily locate information about the biology curriculum.
One problem for British users will be that most of the websites in the directory are American, and the focus is clearly on the curriculum in the USA. Even allowing for that, the list of topics seems unbalanced. While the digestive system is covered, none of the section titles includes the words “blood”, “cardiovascular”, “vein”, “artery” or “heart”, and while there are sections entitled “Natural Selection”, “Evolution”, “Adaptation” and “Origin of Species”, there are none at all on ecology.
However, a larger problem is that the internet changes so rapidly that a directory published in hard copy will always be out of date. The first website I tried to visit (chosen at random) didn’t exist any more, or perhaps there was a misprint in the web address; in any case, I failed to find it.
I suspect that most students and teachers with a basic grasp of how to use search engines will be able to access electronic resources about biology much more effectively without needing this book.
