Appendix B: Libraries

This section focuses on finding information for your technical-documentation projects in libraries.

Preliminaries

Before getting into the details of how to find information in the library or in nonlibrary sources, consider these two general issues.

Library Requirement. One of the requirements for the final report in this course is to find and use information in external sources--either published, unpublished, or both. Of course, you might feel that your project needs no external information--that you already know it all. However, you should be able to identify information that you don't know and that needs to be in the report. For example, imagine you were writing backup procedures for running some sort of high-tech equipment at your workplace. Sure, you may be able to operate the thing in your sleep, but you may not know much about the technical processes or scientific principles behind it. And of course, it could be argued that such discussion is not needed in backup procedures. Background of that sort, however, might indeed be useful. Instructions often benefit by having this kind of background information--it can give readers a fuller sense of why they are doing what they are doing and a way of knowing what to do in case things go wrong.

And of course, it's important to have some experience using the library and other information sources in a more professional, business-like manner. In freshman writing classes, for example, writers are not challenged to push the library's resources for all it's worth--which is normally what typically happens in a technical writing project.

Descriptors and Keywords. Another big issue when you begin your library search is finding those words and phrases that enable you to find the books, articles, reports, and encyclopedias that have all that information you need. Sometimes it's not so easy! A keyword (also called a "descriptor") is a word or phrase under which related information sources are listed. Imagine you're writing a report on the latest theories about the greenhouse effect: you'd check book catalogs and periodical indexes for "greenhouse effect," hoping to find lists of books or articles under that keyword. But that might not be the right one; things might be listed under the keyword "global warming" instead. So how do you find the right keywords? Here are some suggestions:

Brainstorm like crazy! Imagine the possibilities for artificial intelligence: computer-simulated intelligence? machine intelligence? Of course, as it turns out, one big area of this field is called neural networks--who would ever think of that? That's why you need to try some other possibilities as well.
Try to find someone who is familiar with your topic; explore how they refer to it.
Take a look in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. This a giant, multi-volume set of keywords. Big problem with it is that it is not updated and reissued often. If you've got a new-technology topic, it may not be much help.
Try using a system called Dynix: type in your search word followed by two questions marks, and it will give a list of possibilities (ask an ACC librarian for help on this one).
Try to find any book or article on your topic--anything! Then explore it for the vocabulary it uses. In particular, check its listings for titles of other books and articles. You're likely to find words and phrases that are the common keywords.

Where to stop. If you faithfully go through the following suggestions, you're likely to have a long list of books, article, reports, and other sources--more than you could ever read in one semester. What to do? First of all, don't back away from at least knowing what's "out there" on your topic. Once you start looking at your list, you'll see many things that seem to duplicate each other. If, for example, you have five or six books with roughly the same title, just pick the one that is the most recent and that seems the most complete and thorough. Many other sources will branch out into subtopics you have no interest in. And of course many of the items won't even be available in any nearby library or bookstore.

All you really need are those one or two books, those two or three articles, several encyclopedia articles--that's your "critical mass" that you can begin working with. You consult the items on your big list only when you run into areas that seem controversial (you sense that you're getting only one side) and areas where the information seems contradictory, confusing, or just too vague.

Finding Information Sources

Once you've convinced yourself that you need to go after some external information sources (if you haven't, get in touch with your instructor) and have found some pretty reliable keywords to use, it's time to start the search. Where to start though? The logical starting point is whichever information source you think is likely to have the best stuff. For hot, late-breaking topics, articles and proceedings (talks given at conferences that are published) may be the best bet. For stable topics that have been around awhile, books and encyclopedias may be better.

However, if you're not sure, you may want to systematically check a number of the common types of information sources.

Internet Resources. It's increasingly possible to do much if not all your information gathering on the Internet and particularly through the World Wide Web. Take a look at these web resources for information searching:

Purdue Online Writing Lab Search Indexes

Books. One good starting place for your information search is books. At ACC, there are three immediately available resources you can use to find books:

First, there is ACC's online book catalog. Check it using as many different keywords that are related to your topic as you can think of. (See the discussion in "Descriptors and keywords," starting page B-1, for information on finding these.) As you find potentially useful titles, print them (most of the ACC library displays are hooked up to printers).
Another step you should take is to check the UT book catalog. No, you don't have to drive to UT; the ACC library has a computer that is logged into the UT catalog. Go search it with the same keywords you searched the ACC catalog. And again, print out your results on the printer that is attached to the computer.
Another useful strategy for finding books is to check Books in Print, in particular, the online version that is issued on CD-ROM (the ACC library has the books only). Use your keywords here also.

If you do all these searches, you're likely to end up with a monster list of books. No, you don't have to read every one of them. In fact, you may not be able to lay your hands on most of them. Check the list and try to find a book that seems the most recent and the most definitive. (Check tables of contents and indexes to see which are the most thorough, complete, authoritative.) And, no, you don't have to read all of it either--just the parts that relate directly to your topic.

Figure B-1. Searching for books by topic in ACC's online book catalog. To look for books on your report topic, type 3 and press Return. (Type 7 and press Enter to get to the main menu where you can select to search for magazine and journal articles.)

As soon as you can, try to get your hands on as many of these books as you can. Check their bibliographies (list of books, articles, and other information sources consulted) at the end of the book, at the ends of chapters, and in footnotes. These will be good leads to other books that your other searches may not have found. Also, while you're in the stacks, check the books nearby the ones you have on your list; you may see other ones that could prove useful.

Magazine and Journal Articles. While books give you fairly stable information and often at a higher level of generality, magazines, journals, and newspapers often give you much more specific, up-to-date information. There are two ways to approach finding journal articles: through general indexes and through specialized indexes. (Know what an index to periodicals is? It saves you from having to look at the table of contents of every issue of every magazine in the field in which you are searching for articles. You use an index to look up a topic like "greenhouse effect" and find articles written in every magazine that index covers for the period of time covered by that particular volume of the index.) Here are some strategies for finding articles:

Check several general indexes for your topic. These indexes cover a broad range of magazines and journals--they are more popular and are for general audiences and therefore can't be relied on specialized, technical material. Still, they are a great place to start, and if you are not being very technically ambitious with your report, they may supply you with all you need. At ACC, the general indexes include Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Try finding your topic in the most recent volume of each of these (unless you have a topic that was "hot" several years ago, in which case you'd want to check the index volumes for those years).
Try to find a good specialized index for the field that is related to your topic. At ACC, try UMI Periodicals Abstracts, Academic Abstracts, Social Issues Research Series, Business Periodicals Index, General Science Index, Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS), and Applied Science and Technology Index. Again check for your topic in an appropriate volume of whichever of these indexes you use.

Once you get a list of promising articles, don't assume that ACC has them all. If you use Academic Abstracts or UMI Periodicals Abstracts, there's a greater chance that ACC will. If ACC doesn't have a periodical you need, check the listing of UT periodicals (also available at ACC libraries).

As with books, you won't be able to read all of the articles you find, nor will you even be able to get access to them (or at least right away). Try finding and reading the abstracts of the article on your list; this is a good way to get a brief picture of what the article contains and whether it will be useful to you. Just try to find the articles that relate directly to your topic, and read them selectively when you get them.

Figure B-2. Main entry point for searching ACC information resources (usually you see the screen shown in Figure B-1). Select 6 to search an index of over 1000 magazines and journals. Select 1 to search for books (to go to the screen shown in Figure B-1).

Encyclopedias. Another good source of introductory information is encyclopedias. You can use these either to get yourself up to speed to read and understand the more technical information you come across, or you can use the encyclopedia information itself in your report (in which you'll need to document it, as discussed later in this appendix).

Check for your topic in a general encyclopedia, using all the various keywords related to that topic you can think of. As with periodical indexes, encyclopedias are available in general and specialized varieties. You're familiar with the general encyclopedias such as World Book Encyclopedia and the Britannica. And of course a number of encyclopedias are now available online in CD-ROM format (however, the content of most of these seems rather slight compared to the printed versions). These are great for starters, and in some cases they may provide all the information you need in your report. Also, check any bibliography--lists of related books, articles, and reports--that may be listed at the end of individual articles.
Also try to find an appropriate specialized, or technical encyclopedia in which to search for your topic. You may need more technical detail, or your topic may be a tough one not covered very well in general information sources-in which case you may want to consult specialized encyclopedias. Even in this group, there are general ones that cover a broad range of scientific and technical fields--one well-entrenched one is the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Another one is VanNostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. Look for your topic in these. Again, check the bibliographies at the end of the articles you consult. These may point you to articles, books, and reports that will be useful in your report work.

But there are even more specialized encyclopedias--ones focusing directly on a field or profession, for example, solar energy, computers, biology, nursing, and so on. If you can find these, you may be able to zero in on your topic even more--and once again, be sure to check out the lists of other sources at the end of the articles. For help in finding these specialized encyclopedias, check with a librarian.

Reference books--handbooks, guides, atlases, dictionaries, yearbooks. Another source of information reports is all those reference books out there. Every field has its handbooks (repositories of relatively stable, "basic" information in the field), guides (information on literature in the field, associations, legalities, and so on), atlases (more than just maps, great repositories of statistical data), dictionaries and encyclopedias, and finally yearbooks (articles, data, and summaries of the year's activity in a given field). The ACC library has many of these kinds of reference books, and the UT library has even more. You look for them in the catalogs: when you look up your topic, you'll find entries for these sorts of reference books as well as for the books mentioned earlier in this appendix.

If you browse around the reference area of the ACC library, you'll see titles such as these:

Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of Information Technology
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of the Life Sciences
Robotics Sourcebook and Dictionary
Energy: A Guide to Organizations and Information Resources in the United States
McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology

Government reports. One enormous source of technical information is the U.S. government. The only problem is getting to the indexes of it, and then getting the documents themselves. If you're willing to make a trip to the UT main (Perry-Castaneda) library or to the Texas State Library (just east of the Capitol), you can get at most of both. Both libraries are like dumpsites for selected U.S. government documents--and that amounts to a lot! And of course many of these documents are on various kinds of microforms in order to conserve space. But if you wanted a pile of technical reports related to your topic, you could get them this way. Try these strategies for checking in government documents for your topic:

Check in a recent volume of Congressional Indexing Service for reports on your topic (be sure to read the companion abstracts).
Check a recent volume of the Government Reports and Announcements index for reports and other information sources related to your topic.
Check Index to U.S. Government Periodicals for articles appearing in U.S. government magazines and journals related to your topic.

These sources give you just a taste of what's available in government documents. Better indexed methods of finding this type of information are probably now available; check with a librarian for help.

Information from non-profit, association sources. One interesting and nonacademic strategy for finding information is to check for interest groups and trade associations that may be related in some way to your report topic. While there are probably many different ways of finding organizations like these, the Encyclopedia of Associations is one readily available way. Use its topic listings to find your topic (remembering to check all possible keywords), make a list of organizations you find. Some of these will be glad to send you information--although it will likely be strongly biased toward their particular viewpoint. If you have enough time, write inquiry letters to a few of these organizations, and see what additional information you can get.

Checklist for Information Searches

Try following each of these suggestions to see what sorts of information you can find for your topic (everything mentioned here is in the ACC Northridge library):

Using Library of Congress Subject Headings, list as many related keywords (subject headings, descriptors) for your topic as you can.
Using each of your keywords, search the ACC and UT online catalogs for books related to your topic. (Print your results.)
Check Books in Print: Subjects for books on your topic (using your keywords).
Check one or two annual volumes of Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature for articles on your topic (again, using your keywords).
Use Academic Abstracts, Social Sciences Research Issues, or both to check for articles. (These are online databases; you can print out your results.)
If applicable, check for articles on your topic in one or two volumes of Applied Science and Technology Index, General Science Index, Business Periodicals Index, Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS)--any that apply to your topic.
Check one volume of the New York Times Index for newspaper articles on your topic.
Check ACC's online magazine and journal index for articles on your topic (and print out your results).
Check a general encyclopedia (such as the Britannica or Americana) for articles related to your topic.
Try to find a specialized encyclopedia related to your topic; look for articles on your topic in it. (In particular, check in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology).
Try to find a yearbook related in some way to your topic and see what information it has on your topic. (In particular, check two or three volumes of the McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology.)
Find Encyclopedia of Associations and look for interest groups, trade associations, and other kinds of organizations that might have something to do with your topic.
Using the information sources you actually find, check the bibliographies at the ends of books and articles and the ends of chapters in books, as well as the footnotes, for additional information sources.

Return to the table of contents for the TCM1603 Course Guide (the online textbook for Austin Community College's online technical writing course).

This information is owned and maintained by David A. McMurrey. For information on use, customization, or copies, e-mail davidm@austin.cc.tx.us or call (512) 476-4949.