LIS520 Janes

Autumn 2011

Searching Assignment 1

Finding Monographic Resources

This assignment will give you experience in searching a variety of sources useful in finding monographic or other book-like resources.

For each of the following requests, you are to search in whatever sources you believe most appropriate or fruitful for the kind of response you would give to the person indicated. You may decide to search in more than one source or kind of source for each; you may decide a single search is enough. Always keep in mind that there might not be “an answer”.

You should submit, for each request,

• a brief list of the sources you searched and the strategy/ies you used, including printouts of search screens or strategies where possible
• any answers you might find
• any notes on how you might present the response to the user, if you think it’s important (it might not)

Please make it clear where one response ends and the next begins, label each with its question number, and make your document easy to read and navigate through.

Here are the requests:

1 I got the chance to visit Avignon this summer, and I’d like to read more about the papacy during the time it was housed there. Can you find me a good, readable, popularly-oriented book or two?

2 I’m looking for a book about the War of the Worlds radio broadcast; I’d prefer something written soon after and talking about what happened, whether people believed it or so on. Something written later would be a second choice.

3 I’m thinking about a new career as a funeral director. Are there any new books coming out that would help me?

4 Can you find the earliest use of the phrase “eating your own dog food” (or a variation thereof) in a book?

5 What’s the original publication date of Heinrich Mann’s Man of Straw (in German)?

Your submissions will be evaluated on the decisions you make, the search strategies you use, the results you obtain, and the overall quality of your presentation. I will prefer responses that feature use of tools that specialize in monographic search (as compared with tools that have more general use, such as Google and Wikipedia).

You are to work on this assignment on your own (though see the statement on Academic Integrity in the syllabus on what that means). Please be sure that your submission has the last 4 digits of your student number and not your name in the upper right hand corner of the first page.

The Assignment is due in class on October 28.