The publishers describe this weighty tome as ‘a prestigious 21st-century successor to the groundbreaking gazetteers of the 19th century’. The Victorian antecedents to which the publishers refer are Francis Groome's seven-volumed gazetteers, published between 1882 and 1885. The publishers use the term ‘gazetteer’ which, according to a dictionary also published by Collins, is ‘a book or section of a book that lists and describes places’ whereas the sub-title used by Munro and Gittings uses the term ‘encyclopaedia’, a ‘work that contains articles on various topics’. With few exceptions, Munro and Gittings offer a gazetteer, a listing and not an encyclopaedia with articles on matters dealing with place and landscape. Illustrations are confined to town plans; there are no images of buildings, monuments or other features of the built environment that would give the reader a sense of place.
Recently, an encyclopaedia of Melbourne (for review see Urban History, 34,1 (2007), 156–8) enabled the reader to forage in the social and cultural landscapes of that city, as well as those of the built environment. Articles, not simply alphabetical place names, enabled the reader to get some sense of place, and to link these through images and biographies to the dynamics of change. Thus place as process was conveyed, rather than as a static location, as in a gazetteer. Landscapes are about relationships. An ensemble of buildings and spaces together make up an urban landscape; hills and their surrounding features convey power, desolation and emotion. So the alphabetical listing of places, whether of urban settlements or the seven pages of entries for places beginning Ben or Beinn is useful only up to a point. Am I better informed for the entry for Ben Leoid which states it is ‘the anglicised name for Beinn Leoid in Highland’ (p. 65a)?
There is, then, more than a suspicion that Munro and Gittings' work has been overtaken by technology, broadband technology. ‘Google’ a place name and the information displayed exceeds that permissible in a printed form. Take Benslie, for example, described (p. 67, col. a) as ‘A hamlet of North Ayrshire. Benslie lies to the east of Lugton Water 2 miles (3km), east of Kilwinning and 2.5 miles (4km) northeast of Irvine.’ Check your browser for Benslie (and the miners' rows and related entries give a sense of drama and of place http://www.ayrshirehistory.org.uk/Bibliography/monos/amr4.htm). It is a place with people.
So this raises the question: is there a place for gazetteer in the twenty-first century? Lists are important reference tools. Librarians and local historians will relish the volume produced by Munro and Gittings. It has a useful guide to the administrative districts of Scotland under various twentieth-century local government ‘reforms’. However, a reference work is only useful if it is on the shelf, an arm's length away, and at £40 few private individuals will invest in it. This gazetteer, for that is what it is, and other reference works such as The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, edited by Elizabeth L. Ewan, Sue Innes, Siân Reynolds and Rose Pipes (Edinburgh 2006) are, therefore, prime candidates as electronic reference materials. It is to be hoped that this phase is not long delayed.
