Following several years of work, a bibliographic guide focusing on cinema and television music has been published. It is a significant publication as it is the first of its kind to provide such useful tools for accessing sources of research on television and cinema music.

Warren M. Sherk, the special collections database archivist and music specialist at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, is responsible for the guide. Sherk has dedicated his extensive career to cinema music – his work includes writing orchestral arrangements for film soundtracks. His qualifications include a bachelor's degree in composition from the University of Arizona and a master's degree from UCLA. He currently holds the post of secretary of the Film Music Society and he oversaw the publication of Film Music 2: History, Theory, Practice and Elmer Bernstein's Film Music Notebook for the society. Although a practitioner, Sherk has had one foot in the Academy and has presented conference papers and published academic outputs previously.

Sherk started collecting bibliographic entries at the beginning of the 1980s while studying in Arizona, USA. Little by little he gathered relevant information, and 30 years later this extensive work emerges. He has benefited from the invaluable help of many people, primarily from the team of librarians at the Margaret Herrick Library, and also from bibliographies compiled by other authors. In addition to this he has carried out in-depth research into English language publications, mainly in the USA, frequenting numerous libraries: public, university, composers', etc. and referring to Internet sources. The result of such meticulous research is an excellent piece of cataloguing and content organisation that is both highly practical and exceptionally valuable.

This bibliographical guide has the ambitious aim of including any relevant aspect related to cinema music. As Linda Harris, director of the Margaret Herrick Library, comments in the prologue that the book provides, it ‘is a comprehensive and indispensable resource tool for a critical century's worth of information on all aspects of motion picture and television music’.

The 11 chapters of this book are organised according to a criterion combining academic precision and in-depth treatment of the theme in question. For this reason, books and specific doctoral theses on music and cinema come first; then bibliographies referring to soundtrack composers, song composers and lyricists; following these are books about cinema that contain some content on cinema and television music; and, finally, knowledge found in periodic publications – first of all in those specific to cinema music, leading finally to publications of general interest. As noted by the author in the book's introduction, newspaper articles, soundtrack reviews, eulogies, concert programmes, etc. are excluded from the above categories.

A close reading of each of the chapters highlights the book's qualities. First, it is clear that behind the text itself, there is an admirable effort to turn this work into a useful platform for subsequent research. It is not only the result of a systematic drawing of information from reference works, but also of a personal contribution that has meant the inclusion of content summaries and clarification on chapters of special relevance in different publications, wherever the editor sees fit. This aspect is particularly relevant in Chapter 5, titled ‘Books with Material on Film and Television Music’, since in each bibliographic citation, the chapter or chapters of the book dealing with the theme of music in an audiovisual context is specified.

Reflective study of the first chapters, specific to cinema music, titled ‘Books on Film and Television Music’, ‘Academic Dissertations and Theses’, ‘Composer Biographies’, ‘Songwriter and Lyricist Biographies’, ‘Music for the Accompaniment of Silent Films’, helps to get a feeling for the limited scientific output still surrounding such questions. Above all, the limited existence of both academic theses and bibliographies is confirmed. At the same time this confirmation creates an incentive for future researchers, as it is a practical and efficient way of highlighting oversights and of providing new fields for possible studies.

I recently conducted some research into the work of the British composer George Fenton in films directed by Ken Loach. And this book provided the source material to begin this work. Moreover, we should acknowledge the considerable amount of work involved in meticulously gathering the specific content from each of the issues of the periodic publications included in Chapters 7–11, titled ‘Film Music Periodicals’, ‘Composer Society Journals and Newsletters’, ‘Film and Media Periodicals’, ‘Music Periodicals’ and ‘General Interest and Other Periodicals’, with the aim of turning this publication into a more efficient tool for research and for sourcing topics and specific composers.

Finally, when it comes to defining this compilation, two basic criteria for inclusion warrant a mention. The first refers to language; in order to qualify, entries must either be written in English or translated into English. This means that the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and India hold the main, if not almost exclusive coverage, with the USA coming first. It is needless to say that the USA is home to more cinematographic literature than anywhere else.

The second practical criterion corresponds to the decision to make 2005 the cut-off date for this publication. The reasoning is that 2006 is considered the year when Internet content became widely accessible. Thus all entries are written between 1906 (the year when texts about cinema music for silent film were beginning to be published) and 2005.

The end result is a unique work in terms of length and scope. It is a publication intended mainly for academics, professors, students and composers, but it will also appeal to a readership with interests in the relationship between film and music.