Sources
About Books
Catalogs: Library & Union; Bibliographies: Trade, National, Subject; Web Bookstores
& Electronic Publishing; Bibliographic Utilities; Reviews & Criticism;
Reader’s Advisory
Explore the following sources (and similar ones from the textbook or other sources), paying special attention to their intents, potential uses, how they are structured and searched. Use the questions that follow as guides to your thinking about how each of these might be used for those questions, and consider potential sources for each question. On this Catalyst tool, suggest the source you think might be the best, first place to begin; we’ll discuss these in class.
I expect that each of you will have this list prepared and ready and participate meaningfully in class discussion about them (for this and all subsequent sessions).
1.
When is Stephen King’s newest book coming out?
2.
Are there any modern or contemporary prose renderings of the
Canterbury Tales?
3.
I’m writing a paper on Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, and need three critical sources about it.
4.
I’ve read through all the Isaac Asimov Foundation books; what
can you suggest for me now?
5.
I’m starting a research project on the images of refugees in
Canadian literature over the last 20 years.
Can you help me?
6.
I’m looking for a chronology of the civil rights movement.
7.
I need a good general book about diabetes.
Katz, Bill, “Bibliography” from Cuneiform to Computer: A History of Reference Services, 308-329, 1998
Lewis, David, “The User-Driven Purchase Giveaway Library” Educause Review Sept/Oct 2010
Beall, J., et. al., “The Proportion of NUC Pre-56 Titles Represented in OCLC WorldCat”, College & Research Libraries 66 no. 5 (September 2005) p. 431-5
Finding Books by their Plot Lines nypl.org 6/2012
Borders Employees Vent Frustration mediabistro
And prepare to discuss these
questions:
v What are these resources for?
What’s the purpose or motivation for resources such as these? Look very carefully at the categories
described at the top of this page…if you were trying to characterize all the
sources and kinds of sources here (other than all being about books, duh), what
would you say they all had in common?
v What other resources would you
add to this list?
v Why is the metadata in the
sources in this category so specific and detailed, more so than any other
category we will see?
v As “books” become increasingly digital in nature, how will these resources change? Can you imagine what the next generation of
resources might look like or do? And
what is Google Books going to wind up being?
v Why are advice and guidance
important parts of professional information work with resources?
v Do you have questions about the
authority, accuracy, timeliness, trustworthiness, etc. of any of these
resources? Why?