Transcript Categories of Answer Providing Tools

Categories of APTs
Dr. Dania Bilal
IS 530
Spring 2005
Types of Sources
 Primary
 Secondary
 Tertiary
Biographical Sources
 Information about people
– Biographical dictionaries, directories, indexes
– Adults, young adults, children
– General and specialized
– Print and online
 Examples: Current Biography, Who’s Who,
Biography Index
Online Catalogs
 List of titles held in a library collection
– Location service/lead-in tool
• Directs users to information about subjects, authors,
etc. but does not provide the information itself.
– Type of questions: Person, subject, specific
publication
Dictionaries
 Information about terms, language,
historical background of a term,
syllabication, pronunciation, etc.
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Adults & children
Abridged & unabridged
General & specialized
Print and online
Encyclopedias
 Articles on subjects in a general or specific
field of knowledge.
– Multi-volume & one volume set
– Adults/children/young adults
– Print & online
Encyclopedias
 Type of questions answered in
encyclopedias
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Background information on events
Overview of a topic
Profile of a person
Outline/chronology of events
Other
Geographical Sources
 Information about places
 Atlases, maps, gazetteers, guidebooks
– Each provides a different type of information
about places
 Adults, young adults, children
 Print & online
Gazetteers
 Geographic dictionaries
 Places, physical features and information
about them
 Spelling, pronunciation of place names,
history of name changes, population,
industries, agriculture, climate, and history
Maps
 Pictorial representation of earth’s surface or
a section of it.
 Physical/historical/political information
 Information is more tabular and pictorial
than narrative
 Print & online
Atlases
 Collection of maps
 Simple depiction of a geographical area to
detailed information about aspects of an
area, such as population, mineral and energy
resources, and agriculture
 Articles, tables, weather, geology, zip codes
Guidebooks
 Focus is on a specific country, region, city,
building, museum, etc.
 Guidebooks have unique information
appropriate for answering specific reference
questions.
Guides to the Literature
 Focuses on a specific subject area or
discipline
 Lists available sources related to subject or
discipline
 May cover more than one subject area
Guides to the Literature
 Lead-in tools
 Selection tools
 May include bibliographies, guides,
indexing & abstracting services, periodicals,
dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other
sources along with annotations of each title
Handbooks & Manuals
 Compact sources
 Information on a specific area/discipline or
discipline in a concise or comprehensive
form
 Compilations of literary, historical, and
statistical data
Handbooks & Manuals
 Narrative information with charts, tables,
graphs, formulae, etc.
 Directed toward specialist or practitioner
Examples:
Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR), APA
Style Manual, U.S. Government Manual
Indexes
 Guides to the contents of a source of
knowledge
 Systematic arrangement of contents using
different schemes
Examples:
Book index, periodical index, online catalog
Bibliographies
 Lists of writings or publications, such as
books and journal articles, on a given
subject or by a given author
 Information for cited materials using
bibliographic citations
Example:
Bate’s Bibliography of Works on Information Seeking, Indexing, and
Information Retrieval Systems
Abstracting Sources
 Expanded index citations with a brief
summary of the essential points of a
document
 Arrangement is systematic but varies
 Indexes, bibliographies, and abstracting
sources function as Lead-in tools
Monographs and Texts
 Treaties on a subject or class of subjects
 Intended to be read completely
 Detailed discussion of a subject
 Include tables, illustrations, bibliographies
 Not typical reference sources
Yearbooks & Almanacs
 General or specialized
 Current information in descriptive and
statistical form
 Information about people, places,
organizations; numeric information,
measurements, etc. (almanacs)
 Chronology of world events and other info.
Non-biographical Directories
 Directories with no emphasis on people
 Information about organizations, agencies,
societies, clubs, official bodies, institutions,
manufacturers, businesses, professions,
regions, and the like