Today’s post is going to be all about cool things concerning the information chase, with me dropping some links and generally babbling some things I find fascinating. Feel free to pass this one by if the above doesn’t sound like your cup of tea…
Now then, the information chase has been an obsession fascination with me since I was a little button. The information chase is why I: became an avid reader, took a degree in history, love the big ole ocean of data that is the intertubes, and enrolled in a LIS program. This semester’s (only) class is Reference, which is all about finding the information, and while it’s labor intensive, I’m rather enjoying it.
Last night in Reference we discussed electronic resources, such as subscription databases and of course the internet. We spent a bit of time talking about the Invisible or Deep Web. A short sweet definition of the Invisible Web would be pages and information that are not, for a variety of reasons, indexed by any search engine. I like the notion of an ‘off-the-beaten-path’ part of the intertubes: it appeals to a somewhat fanciful notion of librarian as detective…
Down these mean
streetsinternets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.”
Anyhoo, you can find a primer on the Invisible Web here, and a list of tools for taming it here, including such cool things like CIA’s Electronic Reading Room and list of research tools and databases from the National Archive. And of course, maps!
Allright, at this point you’ve either clicked away out of sheer boredom or you’re still reading and all geeked out about cool new ways to track shite down. I’ll assume you’re of the later persusasion and still with me here.
So… Google. Mighty Google. Like of most of you I’ve been using bits of Google – the search engine, Gmail, Google Reader – for quite some time, but it took this New Yorker article to point me at Google Books and really check it out. And lo and behold there’s a shiteload of cool feaures to take in. For example here’s a page for the book Tolkien and the Great War and here’s one for Pride and Prejudice. Look at all that information, including lists of scholarly works and other books that refer to your title, as well as related books, other editions, a preview and in some cases, the full text of the work. There are links to buy and a link to borrow, which is really mind blowing. If you click that link you’re taken to a page (and this is done in conjunction with WorldCat) with a list of libraries in increasing distance from your location – you can clink for more info on a specific library or click to search that library’s catalog. That’s all so miles and miles beyond the card catalogs I grew up with that it really does astonish when I stop and think about it.
The uber-geek in me really loves the full text feature; if you have a favorite writer whose works are in the public domain take a gander, especially if you’re looking for a book that’s out of print or hard to locate. My find of the day: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Through the Magic Door a guided tour of his personal library. I love the fact that I can read his memory of being a starving student forced to choose between eating an buying books:
You see the line of old, brown volumes at the bottom? Every one of those represents a lunch. They were bought in my student days, when times were not too affluent. Threepence was my modest allowance for my midday sandwich and glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, my way to the classes led past the most fascinating bookstore in the world. Outside the door of it stood a large tub filled with an ever changing litter of tattered books, with a card above which announced that any volume within coukld be purchased for the identical sum which I carried in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever raged betwixt the hunger of a youthful body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five times out of six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then there was an entrancing five minutes digging among out-of-date almanacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until one found something which made it all worth while. If you will look over these titles, you will see that I did not do so very badly. Four volumes of Gordon’s “Tacitus” (life is too short to read originals so long as there are good translations). Sir William Temple’s Essays, Addison’s works, Swift’s “Tale of a Tub,” Clarendon’s “History,” “Gil Blas,” Buckingham’s Poems, Churchill’s Poems, “Life of Bacon” – not so bad for the old threepenny tub.”
Also loads of fun: Google Scholar, the easy way to locate scholarly works on your favorite topics or authors.
Allright, I’ll stop. For now.