Reference Resources

Read Chapter 5, "The Reference Collection," to get an overview of the various types of reference resources. It is important to choose the right resource (or, in library jargon, "reference tool,") for the job. The metaphor is apt because works designed for reference use are meant to be "referred to" for a specific information need, not to be read from cover-to-cover like a novel or interesting narrative.

Tools for different tasks

It may help to think of reference resources as serving distinct basic needs:

• Tools that provide facts
  These reference works provide background information or a discrete answer to a specific question. They may help you narrow or broaden a potential research topic:

  Subject encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks
  Statistical yearbooks, almanacs
  Atlases, gazetteers
  Chronologies, historical tables
  Directories

• Tools that lead to other resources
  These reference works are not consulted for the answer to a specific question. They excel as organized lists of resources on particular subjects:

Bibliographies, bio-bibliographies
"Guides to the literature" of a discipline
Indexes to periodical literature (Yes, they certainly qualify!)

Hot tip: If you happen to find a book that is described as a "guide to the literature" of a subject area, it will be a goldmine of expertly chosen, substantial information sources. Use it!

• Hybrid tools that answer questions and lead the researcher to more information
     Subject encyclopedias with bibliographies are an example

Biographical resources and book reviews help measure credibility

Two types of reference resources deserve special mention because they help you assess the worth of other resources: biographical resources and book reviews.

How do you determine the credibility, authority, or cultural bias of an author whose work you wish to use in a research paper? While there is no substitute for long acquaintance with the scholarship of a discipline, you may still be able to draw some reasonable conclusions by finding out:

• What the person has written about in the past.
• What credentials qualify the author to speak with authority.

Biographical resources

A person's record of scholarship or research activity may sometimes be found in biographical reference sources. (Be aware that many scholars are not among the notable persons found in reference books; they may be young or have a small body of work.) The easiest place to start looking for brief biographical information is the Biography and Genealogy Master Index on CD-ROM.

BGMI indexes a large number of biographical reference works, such as Who's Who, American Men and Women of Science, and Biography Index, an index to periodical articles about people. 

Note that most biographical resources list either living or deceased persons, not both.

Deceased persons are listed in national biographies, such as The Dictionary of American Biography (DAB) or the (British) Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Who Was Who is another important compilation. The New York Times and Current Biography are good sources for obituaries.

Living persons are found in the may different series of Who's Who, Current Biography, Contemporary Authors, and elsewhere.

Both living and deceased persons are found in Biography Index. Literary figures of all time periods are in the excellent multi-volume series, The Dictionary of Literary Biography.

A typical search path for biographical information might look something like this:

Reviews

In addition to facts about a person,  it is useful to know:

• How a person's work was received by peers or the public.

Book reviews or reviews in journal articles may help place the author in the context of contemporary scholarship. To find book reviews, start with Book Review Digest on FirstSearch. Other sources of reviews include Book Review Index, the New York Times Book Review, journal articles indexed in a variety of indexes, such as Humanities Abstracts, InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP, and many others. (See your text for a longer list).

Remember to apply the same standards of scholarship to Web pages that you do to print materials. Figure out who or what organization is responsible for publication and what credentials qualify an author or a Web site as a credible resource. Beware of personal Web pages that offer nothing about the author's preparation or accomplishments; even then, the credentials may not be authentic.

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