The awkward and interminable title lists the contents of thisvolume: a 79-page definitional dictionary followed by an assortment offive disparate sections that should have been called appendices. Theauthor’s goal was “to provide comprehensive definitions [of datacommunications terms] while avoiding the lengthy, detailed,subject-by-subject discourse that is the domain of the textbook.”The 500 terms in the dictionary section and the 1300 terms in theappendices (all listed alphabetically in the index) satisfy this aim inthemselves, but the book itself is not comprehensive. It assumes thatthe reader is familiar with the meaning of basic terms like data,communications, IBM, telephone, and facsimile, none of which aredefined, but it also omits the slightly more advanced telephone termssuch as those listed in the glossary of a recent article inComputer magazine ontelecommunications [1]: 411 service, DN, flashhook, FSA, MO, PBX, andthat old phone company favorite, POTS (plain old telephoneservice).
The division of the text into separate sections makes the book muchharder to use than it would have been if the terms in the descriptiveappendices had been alphabetized into the dictionary. As it is, a termmay be in any one of the six sections, so a user must always start withthe index, which may or may not lead him or her to the appropriatesection. The question of how to alphabetize terms that start with anumeral was never faced, so no such terms appear in the index, althoughthey are defined in the text. Terms omitted from the index include5ESS, as well as all the V.24 definitions for interchangecircuits, all of which start with a numeral.
I am not sure who (other than the author) would want this book. Itis not elementary, it is not comprehensive, and it is difficult to use.I suspect that it is the result of meeting a publishing deadline byappending the ill-selected reference material in the last five sectionsto a well-started but unfortunately incomplete dictionary.
A good up-to-date dictionary of communications terms is needed.This book, which is inferior to many of the deprecated vendorglossaries, is not it.
