3.12 Who is Dan Goodman, and why does he keep telling me to talk to a reference librarian? (Science Fiction Composition)
Description
This article is from the rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ, by Geoffrey Wiseman loki@mgl.ca with numerous contributions by others.
3.12 Who is Dan Goodman, and why does he keep telling me to talk to a reference librarian? (Science Fiction Composition)
If every writer with a question asked around online instead of
doing a little legwork for themselves, we'd be inundated with
questions. If your question seems like the kind of thing you
should be looking up, beware that we will suggest that you should
do just that. If you have a particularly good reason why you're
not looking it up, you might want to state that in your question-
asking post.
If you -are- going to look things up, you might want to know
about reference librarians, since many people don't. Dan Goodman
(dsgood@visi.com) wrote this up for the FAQ:
You want to find out what sailors in the Spanish Armada
ate. You go to the library; you look where cookbooks
are, and books on sailing. If the answer isn't there,
what do you do?
You ask a reference librarian. There may be a reference-
only book, or a book in storage, with the answer. Or a
newspaper or magazine article which someone at the
library clipped out and saved. Or maybe the information
is in a book on Comparative Bureaucracy in the sociology
section. A reference librarian who doesn't have the
answer at hand can ask other reference librarians.
It helps if you tell the reference librarian what you're
looking for. Not "where can I find information about a
historical figure in an Eastern European country?" but
"I'm looking for information on the historical Dracula
-- not the fictional one." Not "What does the word
'gamahuche' mean?" but show the passage in which you
found the word. It also helps if you explain what you
intend to do with the information.
Don't worry about looking ignorant or foolish. The last
questioner may have been looking for T.S. Eliot's (or
maybe it was Winston S. Churchill's) novel about
gamekeeping -- with a title something like
"Chatterton's Lady." Yes, I made that up -- the real
examples I've been given aren't believable.
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