So far we have been concerned mainly to delineate the options for pursuing research questions rather than reference questions. The former are more open-ended, in the sense of not having definite right or wrong answers. For example, “What information is there on land reform in seventeenth-century China?” or “What is available on U.S.–Israeli relations after the Six-Day War?” are research questions in the sense that I’m using the term. The major concerns with this type of inquiry involve, first, getting a reasonably good overview of “the shape of the elephant,” such that you can be confident you haven’t overlooked any major sources, and second, gaining some reasonable assurance that you are not wasting time re-inventing the wheel in duplicating research that has already been done. Reference questions, in contrast, are those looking for a specific bit of information—for example, “What is the height of the Washington Monument?” or “Who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1932?”—and that have a more ascertainable “right” answer.
In dealing with research questions, the overall point of the discussion so far is that there are eight different methods of subject searching available through research libraries:
Browsing classified full texts in library bookstacks and using published (and usually copyrighted) subject bibliographies are techniques that cannot be done via computers—the texts and bibliographies I’m referring to are precisely the bulk of library records that are not digitized to begin with. Since the copyright law is still in effect, most books published in 1923 and afterward cannot legally be digitized and made freely readable online.
Each method of searching is potentially applicable in any subject area; each has distinct advantages and disadvantages (both strengths and weaknesses); and each is capable of turning up information that cannot be reached by the other seven. Information that lies in a blind spot to any one method of searching, however, usually lies within the purview of one or more of the other means of inquiry.
Knowledge of these few distinct search techniques—with an understanding of the advantages and limitations of each—will enable most researchers to increase substantially the range and efficiency of their investigations in any subject area. Knowing this framework of options is much more practically and immediately useful than simply having guidelines on “how to think critically about websites.” The latter, of course, is important, but in many cases—and in all cases of scholarly research—it is even more important to know the options for getting beyond free Internet sites in the first place, especially if the sole means of subject access to them is algorithmic relevance ranking of guessed-at keywords.
Most scholars, unfortunately, do most of their research within very limited frameworks of perception; they too often act as though their research options consist only of the following:
Those in the sciences skip number (4) entirely and inflate (3) excessively. Further,
Familiarity with the outline of eight search techniques sketched above, however, will enable most researchers to get beyond these limitations and gain an overview of essentially the full range of options available in any research inquiry; it will also assist them in achieving a sense of closure in making estimates of what options remain to be pursued.
The framework of techniques available for research questions, however, is not fully adequate to deal with reference questions. A ninth method of searching is frequently preferable here:
This kind of searching is based on the fact that within any subject or disciplinary field, certain distinctive types of reference sources can predictably be expected to exist. By “reference sources” I mean those that either point the way into the core literature contained in books, journals, reports, dissertations, etc., or those that summarize, abstract, compile, digest, or review it. Reference sources tend to be those forms of publication that are simply consulted rather than read from beginning to end. 3 These various types of sources form a discernable and predictable structure within the literature of any academic subject area, and a foreknowledge of the existence of this structure can enable you to quickly find the most efficient paths of inquiry, each tailored to answering certain types of questions. Without an ability to focus on one type of literature rather than another, searchers frequently become overwhelmed by way too much retrieval across way too many irrelevant sources.
An important qualification is in order: the line between open-ended research and specific-fact reference questions is often rather blurry. In general, however, it is useful to distinguish the two; as a reference librarian I find that in pursuing research questions it is usually best to think in terms of the first eight methods of searching listed above, while in pursuing the fact questions it is often best to think in terms of searching types of literature. (I have crossed this line several times in this book, however—the discussions of encyclopedia articles, literature review articles, bibliographies, and union lists are essentially focuses on particular types of literature.)
In other words, you can think of two different conceptual frameworks here, “methods” and “types,” each applicable in any subject area, or you can regard the “types” framework itself as an additional, ninth method of searching within a single “methods” model. I prefer the latter. This distinction, however, may be more of a concern to instructors who are trying to structure a class on research techniques than to anyone else. In my own class presentations I discuss the first eight methods alone. In any event, don’t lose sight of the overall point: the multipart “methods” model is itself a radically different conceptual framework from the “Internet model” of a single search box supposedly covering “everything” simultaneously.
Even though the Internet is indeed the first source to which people turn for reference-type facts, it is still very useful for serious researchers to grasp the structure of printed reference sources defined by types of literature. You can reasonably expect to find any of these forms of publication within a wide range of very different subject areas:
Advance knowledge of the existence of this structure of reference source options can greatly increase the efficiency of your searches by enabling you to focus your inquiries to begin with on only the type(s) of literature most likely to answer them. For example, a researcher who wants to know “What was going on in Virginia in 1775?” could do a search for relevant journal articles in America: History & Life, specifying “1775” in the database’s Historical Period limiting box, but the result would be list of more than 1,800 articles. Similarly overwhelming retrievals result from searches of full-text newspapers of the time. An OPAC search for the heading Virginia—Chronology, however, is likely to turn up James A. Crutchfield’s The Grand Adventure: A Year-By-Year History of Virginia (Dietz Press, 2005), which provides a much more manageable overview.
What makes types of literature so important is that their existence is predictable within all subject areas. Even if you know nothing in advance of the subject content of a disciplinary area, or any specific titles within it, you can still move around efficiently within its reference literature by focusing your inquiries on only the few types that are most appropriate to your interest. You can thereby eliminate from your search hundreds of sources that are not formatted in ways that will get you directly to what you want. For example, consider the arrangement of C. D. Hurt’s Information Sources in Science and Technology (346 pages; Libraries Unlimited, 1998); the first three sections of its Contents are structured as follows:
Essentially the same few type-of-literature breakdowns are used in 21 different subject areas (Zoology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, General engineering, Civil Engineering, Health Sciences, etc.). While no one can possibly remember the 1,542 individual sources described in Hurt’s book, anyone with a bit of training can remember the much smaller number of types of literature that can be expected to exist, no matter what subject is being researched. The predictability of this format structure within any topic area, again, allows many inquiries to be much more immediately focused, with fewer wasted steps, and accomplished without the searcher having to wade through massive retrievals of term-weighted irrelevancies.
It is the predictability of this structure across all disciplines that often makes types of literature the focus of information literacy or bibliographic instruction classes. The types of literature all by themselves will always provide at least one kind of initial and readily discernible “shape” to the literature of any subject area, in a way that will alert you to look for multiple important parts of “the elephant” that would not otherwise fall within your initial purview. Note, however, that these types apply only to reference sources—the tertiary literature of a subject that lists, summarizes, or describes its primary and secondary literature. Compare the table of contents of the Hurt bibliography above to that of the Remini/Rupp bibliography on Andrew Jackson in Chapter 9. Both are themselves tertiary-level bibliographies, but one lists the (predictable) types of tertiary reference works, whereas the other presents a listing of (unpredictable) individual primary- and secondary-level sources.
Some of the types of reference literature—“abstracts and indexes,” for example, whether electronic or print—are themselves geared much more toward answering research rather than reference questions; so, again, the line between inquiries that can be handled by “methods of searching” and “types of literature” is not hard and fast. Both models of predictable search options can sometimes be used for either research or reference inquiries.
The overall point here is that if you understand the trade-offs and the strengths and weaknesses of all of the different methods of searching and types of literature, then just from this knowledge of the formal properties of the several retrieval systems, you can ask much better questions to start with. Further, even without having any prior subject knowledge or knowing any specific sources, titles, or databases in advance, you can also have much better expectations of finding answers than if you start out with only a knowledge of a few particular subject sources or an uncritical faith in the capabilities of keyword searching in Google or Bing or Yahoo!. You can map out a strategy on a formal level before looking at any particular sources by making such distinctions as these:
Again, it is possible to form scores of a priori “framing” observations like this that entail a combined knowledge of both methods of searching and types of literature that will predictably be available in any subject area. Simply knowing the kinds search techniques and sources that are always available will make you more proficient in finding specific instantiations of them geared toward whatever particular inquiry you may be pursuing. Having this mental framework is much more useful than having prior subject knowledge in most research inquiries. (Subject knowledge is indeed important in some—not all—instances; hence, “people sources” are indeed included as part of the frame.)
Note especially that having such a range of conceptual and procedural options available will give you much better results than having only the commonly assumed single option that might be stated as:
Students who have experience with only this option are, I find, usually hungry to be shown the many preferable alternatives—especially if they are working on something that matters to them.
Having a prior knowledge of the different methods of searching and types of literature will also enable you to eliminate whole areas of options with which you might otherwise waste time (e.g., in trying to use either computer or print sources when the information you need is most likely to exist in some person’s head; in trying to use databases rather than classified bookstacks when the needed information is likely to exist only at the page or paragraph level within printed, copyrighted books that haven’t been digitized; in trying to use Internet search engines or even Wikipedia for overview perspectives when multiple published encyclopedia or literature review articles are preferable.) That knowledge also can, and does, eliminate the retrieval of hundreds of thousands of irrelevant sources having the right words in the wrong contexts or in wrong formats of records.
It is this foreknowledge of the predictable formal properties of the several retrieval options—no matter what the subject area—that usually makes good reference librarians much more efficient in finding the best information quickly, uncluttered by irrelevancies, than even full professors in a given subject area.
Students in a particular academic subject area usually learn its information resources from a particular list they are given to study. The result is that they often learn a few individual “trees” without perceiving the overall arrangement of the forest or the variety of methods available for getting through it, whether by walking, riding, flying over, swinging from branch to branch, or burrowing underneath. The training of reference librarians, on the other hand, is more from the top down than from the bottom up. They first learn the options than can be expected in any forest—here the analogy is not perfect—and the various ways of moving around in it. They learn the overall methods of searching and types of literature that predictably exist in any subject area; they thereby usually gain an understanding of the full range of options for finding information even—or rather, especially—in unfamiliar subjects areas. (Most questions are such that neither the questioner nor the librarian has sufficient prior subject knowledge in the area.) The librarians may not understand the content of the discipline in which they are searching as well as professors within it, but the librarians will probably have a better grasp of the range of options for finding the content, which is a distinct and different skill.
The study of the categorization, arrangement, storage, and retrieval of information is a discipline unto itself; it is called library and information science. Those whose acquaintance with it is minimal should be wary of assuming that they are doing fully efficient research on their own, for there will always be more options in searching than they realize. (Many of the same people would also be well advised to progress well beyond the naïve assumption that the intellectual scope of librarianship extends only to the creation of Dewey Decimal numbers.) The moral of the story is brief: the more you know about what your options are, the better the searcher you will be, but remember to ask for help, since the probability is that you are missing a great deal if you work entirely on your own. (A very good time to ask for help is when you are about to change the scope or the subject of your paper because you can’t find the information you need to support the paper you really want to write.)
So, then, how do you actually find the particular types of literature within the subject area of your interest? Librarians have a few major aids enabling them to identify the type-of-literature structures within any given field. The first two can be considered basic sources; the others, updates. They are:
The predictability of this kind of “form” cataloging enables researchers to identify quickly new instances of familiar types of literature within any subject area, because their library’s catalog will be updated daily.
The above sources enable researchers to find types of literature primarily in monographic or printed-book formats. Remember, however, that many other types of literature exist within journal and report literature; these include such forms as book reviews, literature reviews, database reviews, software reviews, film reviews, editorials, letters to the editor, editorial cartoons, obituaries, curriculum guides, and bilingual materials (see Chapter 10). Many of the thousands of subscription databases enable you to specify such formats within the literature they cover. Researchers are always well advised to look at the Advanced search screen for whichever database they select and to actively look for the form-limit options (often hidden in drop-down menus) before typing in any keywords.
The various distinctions among methods of searching and types of literature obviously provide much to remember. An easy way to keep the outline of options in front of you would be to use the table of contents of the present volume. Remember that all of these options potentially apply to virtually any subject.
Perhaps the most important point overall, however, is the observation with which this book began: if you want to do serious research, it is highly advisable not to confine your searches to the open Internet alone. The information universe of the future, no matter how its contents may change and grow, is best understood in terms of unavoidable trade-offs among what, who, and where restrictions. The free Internet itself will never include everything available in real research libraries until such time as human nature itself changes in the direction of selfless benevolence and all writers, artists, and creators forgo the advantages of intellectual property to voluntarily contribute their work products to the good of a socialist whole, accepting recompense at levels determined by bureaucratic formulas rather than by marketplace forces of supply and demand. History has not been kind to social systems based on the assumption that all (or even most) human beings will act in this manner. Within the world of learning, however, history has also witnessed the creation of a marvelous mechanism for protecting the rights of authors while also making the universe of knowledge freely available to anyone who will travel to certain locations. I hope this book will lead to a more efficient use, and a greater appreciation, of that mechanism: bricks-and-mortar research libraries.