Bibliographic guide
Bibliographic guides may also be termed "literature guides", "guides to information sources", "guides to reference materials", “how to find out about . . . “, "pathfinders", "subject gateways", etc. They are publications that list and describe the system of information resources in one or more areas.
A guide is a kind of bibliography of documents in a domain, but is deviates from typical subject bibliographies: First a guide concentrates on reference literature (bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias etc. at the expense of primary literature). Second a guide is typical selective (more or less so), while, for example, a bibliography of bibliographies tend to be comprehensive. There are of course many variations or sub-types of guides as of any other kind of literature. Guides can include more or less text in addition to the bibliographical entries (which should be annotated). Ideally, a guide guides the user in the management of the literature. It informs about the strength and weaknesses of different works, and it should provide the basis for a rational section of works to use and help the user navigating in the ocean of literature, databases and information. It can be seen as a kind of interface between the user and the literature, and it can be seen as kind of textbook for courses in literature searching or as a self-help book to library and information use. One could also say that a guide is an explicating of what librarians do when they built collections and learn to use them in order to provide reference services.
Bottle (1997, p. 213) writes: "Probably the first distinct information science literature type was the literature guide. An early example was W. Ostwald's Die chemische Literatur und die Organisation der Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1919)".
Literature:
Allen, F. R. (1993). Essential business reference sources: a survey of seven bibliographic guidebooks. RQ, 33(1), 1993, 77-84
Anson, C. & Woodward, M. (1992). A survey of legal research guides. Law Library Journal, 84(3), 543-557.
Balay, R.; Carrington, V. F. & Martin, M. S. (Eds.). (1996). Guide to reference books. 11th ed. Chicago: American Library Association.
Bertram, S. (1974). Library Pathfinders. American Society for Information Science, Western Canada Chapter: Proceedings 6th Annual Meeting, Saskatoon, September 25-27, 1974, edited by Margot B. McBurney. Alberta, University of Alberta Library, Sept 74 (pp.99-104).
Bland, R. N. (1990). Toward the catalog as a tutorial guide to the literature. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 11(1), 71-82.
Bottle, R. T. (1997). Information science. In J. Feather, & P. Sturges (Eds.), International encyclopedia of library and information science (pp. 212214). London & New York: Routledge.
Colby, S. M.; Normore, L.; Watson, B.; Barton, C. & Kalfatovic, M. (2001). Pathfinders. OCLC Newsletter, (252) Jul/Aug 2001, p.37-41. http://www.pais.org/news/corc.stm
Day, A. & Walsh, M. (Eds.). (2000). Walford’s Guide to Reference material. Vol. 2. Social and Historical Sciences, Philosophy and Religion. 8th edition. London: Library Association Publishing.
Herron, N. L. (ed). (1996). The Social Sciences : A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to Selected Sources (Library and Information Science Text Series) 2nd edition. Libraries Unlimited.
Hjørland, B. (1989). Psykologi og grænseområder. Kilder til information. [Psychology and related fields: Sources of information] 3rd. rev. ed. Copenhagen: The Royal Library.
Hoselitz, B. F. (Ed.). (1970). A reader’s guide to the social sciences. New York: Free Press.
Jarvis, W. E. (1985). Integrating subject pathfinders into online catalogs. Database, 8(1), 65-67.
Kapoun, J. M. (1995). Re-thinking the library pathfinder. College and Undergraduate Libraries, 2(1), 93-105.
Li, T. (2000). Social Science Reference Sources. A Practical Guide. Third Edition. Greenwood Press. Westport, Conn.
Mayes, P. B. (1978). The readability of guides to the literature. Aslib Proceedings, 30(3), 123-126.
Ostwald, W (1919). Die chemische Literatur und die Organisation der Wissenschaft. Leipzig.
Surles, R. H. (1989). Legal research guides as bibliographic efforts. Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 9(1/2), 43-55.
Taylor, P. J. (1978). Information guides. A survey of subject guides to sources of information produced by library and information services in the United Kingdom. London, Aslib, Research and Development Department.
See also: Bibliography; Document typology; Metabibliography; Subject gateway
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 31-03-2006