For this new edition I wish to thank all of my colleagues at the Library of Congress, from whom I have learned more than I can convey here. Particular thanks go to Cassy Ammen, Barbara Bair, Lee Douglas, Sheridan Harvey, Jan Herd, Emily Howie, Laura Kells, Judy Robinson, Diane Schug-O’Neill, Anne Toohey, Virginia Wood, Kathy Woodrell, and the late Bill Reitwiesner. Kristi Conkle’s help with the illustrations has been especially valuable. Researchers Joel Achenbach, Jane Blevins, Ellon Carpenter, Paul Dickson, Abby Gilbert, Isabella Jackson, Ken Kitchell, Edward Luft, Joshua Nall, Martina Schlögel, Claire Sherman, and David Stewart have also provided particularly useful feedback for this edition. (Not least among such researchers are the members of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a secret society of questionable characters who keep coming up with unusually interesting inquiries.) Thanks, also, to the many companies and database providers from whose promotional material and websites I have derived (sometimes with modifications of my own) descriptions of their wares. Stephen Rhind-Tutt of Alexander Street Press, Nick Galvin and Karena Donnelly from EBSCO, Alistair Morrison of LexisNexis, Eric Calaluca and Peggy Fulton from Paratext, Kristin Culp of Thomson Reuters, and Clay Boss, Catherine Jervey Johnson, and Daniel Coyle of ProQuest were particularly helpful. Any mistakes remaining in the text are entirely my own.
A very special thanks to Nancy Toff at Oxford University Press, who has been most understanding and patient in shepherding this edition into print, and Richard Johnson, senior production editor, who was most helpful during the final stages of editing.
A note to library catalogers: the first edition of this book appeared in 1987 as A Guide to Library Research Methods; the second and third editions (1998 and 2005) were published under the current title.