“Well, you
wouldn’t know that. They hide
most of that information in books!” Hector
Cyr (Oliver Platt) in Lake Placid [Motion picture]. USA, 20th
Century Fox, 1999.
The Reference Room: Every library has a reference room that contains books that provide introductory or background information, quick facts and statistics. The information in many of these books is not available on the Web or is quicker to locate in a book. Some of these books do have an electronic version, but the cost is often too high for individual libraries to pay the licensing fee for access each year.
Purpose of Guide: This guide to the types of materials you will find in a typical reference room is designed to help you learn more about all the wonderful information “hidden” in these books. The examples are taken from the Feinberg Library, Reference Room at Plattsburgh State University.
Subject Encyclopedias
In addition to the general encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica or World Book, there is an encyclopedia for almost any subject you can think of. These subject encyclopedias, like this Encyclopedia of Birth Control, cover what is known about a particular subject in a comprehensive fashion, but the knowledge is condensed and summarized in such a way that you can quickly get an overview of a particular aspect of a subject in a few pages or a couple of paragraphs. If you're unfamiliar with a subject or need to know some of the main theories or major authors in the subject area, choose a subject encyclopedia.
Feinberg Library has over 900 encyclopedias on different subjects, ranging from the Encyclopedia of Propaganda to the Greenwood Encyclopedia of Women's Issues World-Wide to the Encyclopedia of Food Science and Nutrition.
Almanacs
Almanacs pull together many statistics in one easy-to-use volume that's updated regularly. While you can find almost all the statistics in a general almanac on the Web, it's often quicker to find what you need in one of these books. There are general almanacs, like this one, and specialized ones, such as the Hispanic American Almanac and the Earth Almanac.
Everyone's used a road atlas at some point to map a trip, so you're probably familiar with what an atlas is. There are atlases of the world and atlases for particular countries. That's only the tip of the iceberg though. There are historical atlases, like the Historical Atlas of Central America and atlases that have nothing to do with geography, like the Color Atlas of Anatomy, which provides "maps" of the human body.
A dictionary provides definitions of words and, sometimes, phrases. The largest English-language dictionary is the Oxford English Dictionary, which is 20 volumes long and growing! There are foreign language dictionaries and dictionaries that define the jargon of a particular subject area or specialty. There are even dictionaries that aren't dictionaries at all, but encyclopedia, like the Dictionary of Art, that is really a subject encyclopedia of world art.
Guidebooks give descriptions of places that you might travel. Let's Go Europe doesn't have the word, guidebook, in the title, but it's a guide to places to see and explore when visiting Europe, designed primarily by and for students. The term, guidebook, is often used in a title to indicate that it's a guide to a particular topic, rather than to a particular place.
Handbook
A handbook is a sort of small subject encyclopedia, focusing on a single, fairly narrow, subject. Sometimes handbooks are how-to, practical books, such as the Educators Handbook on Effective Testing or the Artist's Handbook. Sometimes they are for the researcher to use to find summary information on a topic, such as the one to the left, the Handbook of Social Psychology. Like subject encyclopedias, handbooks can often be a good place to start your search for information, especially if you are new to the subject.
Indexes/Abstracts
Most abstracts/indexes are online via the Library Home page (www.plattsburgh.edu/library/), under Articles in Databases. If you are looking for subject access to magazine and journal articles published earlier than the early 1980's, you will need to use the print indexes/abstracts in the Reference Room. These resources provide you with the basic information to find the actual article in print or microform. If you want to read about an event that took place in the 1950's in an article written at the time, indexes such as the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature or the International Index to Periodicals are good places to start.
Manuals give you specific information on how to do something or how something works. For example, The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association gives you detailed information on how to write citations in the APA format--something some of your instructors will require. The United States Government Manual (on the left) gives you information on how each area of the U.S. government works, including organizational charts to help you figure out which agency is responsible for which area of the government. Knowing this can make searching for additional information on the Web much easier!