Monday, March 4, 2013

learning the RC: Dewey 020 (You mean the dewey has a section on Library Science?!?)

Here's meta for me: Library science includes a category about library science!

I wish I had known about Information Today's Library and Book Trade Almanac (formerly The Bowker Annual): Facts, Figures, and Reports (020.5 LIB 2012 /57th Edition) back when I was in grad school learning about the profession. This book would be what you would read when you don't have time to read all the stuff from the scholarly journals to keep you abreast of the major trends in the field. However, you would be about a year behind. Still, info on legislation, statistics, bibliographies, federal agencies and so forth. This is for the librarian to get a better idea of what s/he's getting in for by working in the field.

Scenario: I'm going to start a library. I need to know what are the informational books I should have in my collection so that it is worthy of my patrons and provides them a starting point for their research needs. I turn to the Public Library Core Collection: Nonfiction tome and it's various supplements (025.2 PUB 2008 13TH ED. and Supplement 2011) to keep me abreast of what I should have. Keep in mind, this is published by EBSCO and non ALA, but whatever. Those good folks have got me started and I'll turn to Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal and all the rest after I have a core collection.

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