As announced in No. 1/79, the International Journal will from now on publish reviews of books on guidance and counselling throughout the world. This new venture has some difficulties. For although there are a number of publications every year which will be or ought to be recognized by all members of our worldwide profession, there are a large number of nationally most important books which cannot be reviewed in an international journal without presenting detailed information about the particular society and counselling system to whose analysis or further development those books are intended to make their contributions.
While it should be fairly easy to write book reviews of the former typeshort, informative, and with clear evaluation , the Editors feel that for the latter an appropriate type of book review has as yet to be developed. In any case the Editors are determined to make the new review section a true forum of information and discussion about current books on the numerous areas of guidance and counselling, not only from English speaking societies but from a truly international perspective.
Although the Editors as a group are responsible for the whole Journal one of them, Dr. Lothar F. Martin from the University of Bonn, F. R. Germany, will lend his special attention to this section. He will be happy to receive suggestions of books to be presented in reviews. And we all hope that a large number of experts from all parts of the world will be willing to contribute to this new section.
To encourage authors from countries and areas which have only recently j oined the international counselling movement, Martin has written a comprehensive book review about recent German publications on school counselling. As readers will notice, the books were selected according to their value as indicators and mirrors of the development of school counselling during the last decade. In addition they gain an international perspective~ mainly as reflecting strategies of introducing school counselling, which may also be applied elsewhere.