This small book is important both for its contents and for what it represents, since national bibliographies of bibliographies are scarce in Latin America. This is, the compiler notes, the first bibliography of Argentine bibliographies to appear in 50 years. Its sole predecessor was a listing of 164 bibliographies and catalogs published in the Revista de la Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1919. The present work lists 452 bibliographies covering the national period. The author indicates that it is a selective list from a total of over a thousand titles which he has assembled and which are to be included in the definitive list he hopes to publish later. However, some of the future inclusions appear to be of minimal significance, and full use should be made of the present bibliography rather than awaiting a more extensive one.
The arrangement is that of the decimal system (Dewey or Universal), ranging from general works in the 000s to geography, biography, and history in the 900s with entries alphabetical by author within each classification. There is no author index. Perhaps the most valuable single section is that covering personal bibliographies, in which even a greater share than in other sections are compilations that have appeared in periodicals and to which there is otherwise no easy access. Most items are annotated as to contents. There are occasional evaluative comments.
The author, a professor of library science at the Universidad Católica Argentina, is well known for his excellent Obras de referencia de América Latina, which he published in Buenos Aires in 1965 with the aid of UNESCO.
