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To find books and reviews, use LIBRARY CATALOGS, REVIEWING SOURCES, BIBLIOGRAPHIES, and BOOKSELLERS. This is illustrated in the FindBooks-BigPicture visual on how to find books and publications having similar characteristics in online library catalogs. Another valuable information is about people. At the end of this section, we suggest several important sources to keep in mind. Examples are directories, biographical dictionaries, encyclopedias as well as book length BIOGRAPHIES. For example, you need books on: CELLULAR TELEPHONES Where do you find titles for these publications? To browse, identify, select, and borrow books, use library catalogs. An example is MIT's online library catalog, Barton. Another is Melvyl® on the Web (WebMEL) http://www.melvyl.ucop.edu or telnet (telnet://melvyl.ucop.edu). These two versions search the same database of documents; however, the two interfaces differ. The Web version uses point-and-click interface, while the telnet version uses command language. More, later. To purchase books, use booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, technical bookstores, professional societies such as ACM and IEEE, and general bibliographies. By the word books, we mean any publications that look like books. Examples are books themselves, maps and atlases, theses and dissertations, technical reports, reference books, pamphlets (books that have less than 100 pages), book-length biographies, treatises, and government documents. Libraries often give access to special collections both printed and digitized, rare books, manuscripts, and oral histories. For some of these collections, see Library of Congress special collections, MIT Museum which houses drawings, photographs, and holograms including the Science and Technology Collection, libraries and archives at the Smithsonian Institution, National Archives, and the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections that are maintained in research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies throughout North America. Of special interest is the Archives at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. Enter Collections and Research Aids and from there you can search SIRIS, Smithsonian Institution Research Information System. Select Technology, Invention, and Innovation Collections. Some of the Finding Aids are online. If interested in Tesla's primary sources, go to Kenneth M. Swezey collection (expertly organized by Robert S. Harding in 1988). This will get you started to discover your own special collections and primary sources. Many general books are now available on the Web: The Online Books Page http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ contains a growing number of links to online texts. Internet Public Library Reading Room Texts includes full texts online that are free to the public http://www.ipl.org/reading/books. Digital Books, images, and more are at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections. |
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To search books, maps, titles of conference proceedings, and journal titles, use library catalogs such as Barton and Melvyl®. Also search World Catalog which is a superclass of over 17,000 public, academic, research and other libraries. For a general model of library catalogs, see this visual. Access most library catalogs via the Web or telnet. For example, WebMEL allows you to use the point-and-click interface in order to explore and search its vast resources and collections. Its telnet version uses command language as search interface. Search result should be the same regardless of the interface. If you are a novice searcher, start off with the Web. Subject headings are drawn from a five-volume set of "red books", Library of Congress Subject Headings or LCSH. We list selected subject headings and show you how to search for published material that libraries house. LCSH (like many other controlled vocabularies) provides a standardized and consistent set of terms, such as subject headings, classifications, and names, in order to aid you in finding information. If you searched under PLASTICS BIBLIOGRAPHY, you will get a list of records each representing a bibliography on the topic of plastics. Each entry will have author of that bibliography, title, publication information, as well as call number of the library which has that book. Q: For example, look at the following subject headings. What will you get after you have typed in some of these headings into library catalog? Cellular telephones. <see Table 1 below> How important are these subject headings? Should you use them in searching? Is there a difference in search results between keywords and subject headings? The answer is YES, YES, and YES!!! Are LCSH headings online? Not as of this writing, which presents a small problem for you. Where do you find LCSH books? How do you find subject headings in LCSH books? LCSH books are located in the reference area in every library, at least in U.S. The books arrange subject headings alphabetically, like dictionaries. They also show you relationships between and among headings. Some headings are not to be used in searching library catalogs. In such cases, it will direct you to search the correct heading: Term X, "use" term Y, where term Y is the preferred term. LCSH also shows headings that are broader (broader terms, BT), narrower (NT), or related in some way to the preferred main term (RT). The purpose of these hierarchical relationships is to show that by searching under the broader heading, you will retrieve a larger class of documents that covers a broader topic (e.g., "telephones" is broader to "cellular telephones"). The heading "web cellular telephones" is narrower to "cellular telephones" and will retrieve fewer documents. For illustrative purposes, we typed in "cell phones", an obvious keyword that people use for cell phones. We found no records for books in UCLA library. Does it mean that UCLA or other libraries in California have nothing on cell phones? You guessed it correctly, unlikely. Simply, there was no match between our keywords and LCSH subject headings that were given by catalogers to describe books on cell phones. Table 1 below illustrates this point. We searched for English language books on cell phones that are published within three years and held in the UCLA's online library catalog. We summarize our results in Table 1. While the first row shows an unsuccessful match on the keyword search, the subsequent LCSH headings in red produced considerable amount of documents.
Table 1 shows that if we did not use LCSH headings we would have missed a total of 203 documents in the UCLA's database of publications.
Table 2 below, illustrates what you would find in LCSH books under the heading Superconductors. Our comments are given in the right-hand column.
1.Notice
the call number on spine of books (e.g., TA 418.9 C6 T75
1980). Use this call numbers to locate similar publications.
The TA 417.9 class number will likely group together similar
items on composite materials. Some of the subject headings for language dictionaries in science and technolgy are: Science--Dictionaries--Russian. Note that LCSH and corresponding classes for polymers, glass, and metals are as follows: Polymers--Dictionaries. (TP 1087 E46 1985)
Searching for authors and their work in MELVYL™ via the telnet: cat->f pa mackenzie john (the telnet version of Melvyl uses the command language: f pa is for the command: "find personal author" ) Searching
for authors and their work in MELVYL™
via the WEB: mackenzie jd (type in the author's name) 26 records by Mackenzie, John D. (the number of records may vary) Examples of records representing publications by Mackenzie in the library catalog: Mackenzie,
John D. Development of substitutes for asbestos.{Washington,
D.C.} : Bureau of Mines, U.S. Dept. of the Interior,
Minerals Resources Technology, {1981} Sol-gel
optics III : 25-27 July 1994, San Diego, California / John
D. Mackenzie, chair/editor ; sponsored and published by
SPIE--the International Society for Optical Engineering.
Bellingham, Wash., USA : SPIE, c1994.
Searching on a given topic (via the telnet): cat->f su acoustic emission (command language for "find subject")
Other Useful Search Approaches: 1. FOOTNOTE search -- from encyclopedia articles, review articles, progress and editorial papers (Backward). There are many other fruitful approaches to finding information depending on the nature of wanted information (e.g., in-progress, current vs mature; factual vs bibliographic; funded by specific agencies; patents and specifications; product reviews, competition, trends). |
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Checking what others have said about the book you are interested in? Use reviews. American Reference Books Annual (ARBA). Wynar, Bohdan S. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1970- . Annual. The purpose of ARBA is to provide critical reviews of all reference books published in US from January to December each year. Coverage is as complete as possible. Reviews are from 75 to 300 words, are written by specialists and the ARBA staff members. Although ARBA has been used by librarians, we include this work here because reviews are critical, signed, and each volume covers all disciplines including engineering, science and technology. Computing Reviews (CR). v. 1- 1960- {New York} Association for Computing Machinery. Covers hardware, software, theory, information systems, computing methodologies, applications, and computing milleux (see top two levels of the CR classification system). Reviewers are signed by authors in CR. The reviewer index uses symbols to show reviews that are specific for books, proceedings, PhD theses, comparative book reviews, scholarly reviews and rebuttals. There are 6 files: the author index, the index to the CR classification system, books and proceedings, non-book literature, and the general terms index. Answers questions such as "what books are reviewed that can tell me about 'fuzzy logic'?" NOTE: annual indexes are called ACM Guide to Computing Reviews. ACM Guide to Computing Literature. New York: ACM. 1977+ Annual guide to current professional computing literature including books, journal articles and conference papers. In the ACM Guide ..., contrast the "Category Index" to the "Keyword Index." Are there any "comparative book reviews" in vol 36(12) 1995 of CR? How can you quickly determine if there are any "comparative book reviews" in the December issue of 1995? http://www.acm.org/catalog/eprods/online_service.html http://www.acm.org/class/1991/overview.html Mathematical
Reviews,
American Mathematical Society. Entries in the subject index are arranged in classification order: 00 General >Reviews are signed, lengthy and critical. Besides the main subject index, others include indexes for authors, mathematical reviews, as well as key index. >Note review lag that exists between publication date and review data. What can you say about publication cycle in mathematical literature? >MathSciNet http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/about_mathsci.html is the searchable Web database providing access to over 60 years of Mathematical Reviews and Current Mathematical Publications from 1940 to the present. Information on how to subscribe and get answers to pricing questions is on the Web as well as at (800) 321-4267. Visit MathSciNet Demo http://www.ams.org/msnhtml/msndemo_main.html as well as free of charge featured reviews http://www.ams.org/mathscinet and publications http://www.ams.org/publications, all produced by the American Mathematical Society. |
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Scientific and Technical Books and Serials in Print. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1972- . Annual. Access is by subject, author, and title. As a trade bibliography, it provides publications by different publishers as well as over 15,000 serial titles under 270 subject headings. Also use professional societies, such as IEEE http://www.ieee.org and ACM http://www.acm.org/; they are publishers of many texts typically by their member writers. These societies also announce publications that are put out by a wide variety of commercial publishers. There are specialized bibliographies in many subdisciplines and topics. If your interest is in database management, and digital indexing specifically, check ResearchIndex (formerly CiteSeer) of the Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison. |
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FOR INFORMATION ON PEOPLE: BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES Biography and Genealogy Master Index Detroit: Gale Research. American men & women of science : a biographical directory of today's leaders in physical, biological and related sciences. 1995-96, 19th ed. New Providence, N.J: Bowker, 8 v. Q:
How many scientists were awarded the National Medal of
Technology in 1997? Dictionary
of scientific biography.
Supplement II. Collier Macmillan, 1990. Who's who in science in Europe : a biographical guide in science, technology, agriculture, and medicine. 8th ed. Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex, UK : Longman ; Detroit, MI, USA : 2 v. World Who's Who in Science: A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present. Chicago: Marquis-Who's Who Inc. http://www.biography.com/cgi-bin/biomain.cgi An expanded biography Web source puts over "20,000 greatest names, past and present" (DAB Dictionary of American Biography) http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/ A
biographical dictionary of Australian names in science,
technology and medicine from the 18th century to
present. |
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FatBrain http://www.fatbrain.com or Amazon http://www.amazon.com |