Transcript Answer-Providing Tools

Answer-Providing Tools (APTs)
Dr. Dania Bilal
IS 530
Spring 2006
Types of Sources
 Primary Sources
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Actual records of events that survived from the
past.
Diaries, personal journals, personal accounts,
interviews, original manuscripts, artifacts,
poems, etc.
Types of Sources
 Secondary Sources
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Offer an analysis or a restatement of primary
sources.
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, books and articles
that interpret or review research works
Types of Sources
 Tertiary Sources
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Lead-in tools to primary and secondary sources
Indexes, databases, etc.
Biographical Sources
 Information about people
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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
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Location service/lead-in tool
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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.
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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
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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
 Specific country, region, city, building,
museum, etc.
 Unique information appropriate for
answering specific reference questions
Guides to the Literature
 Specific subject area or discipline
 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
 Writings or publications such as books,
journal articles, etc. on a given subject or by
a given author
 Bibliographic citations
Example:
Bate’s Bibliography of Works on Information Seeking, Indexing, and
Information Retrieval Systems
Abstracting Sources
 Indexes with citations and abstracts of
articles and other materials
 Lead-in tools
Monographs and Texts
 Treaties on a subject or class of subjects
 Intended to be read completely
 Detailed discussion of a subject
 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
Class Activity
Match the question to the most suitable APT:
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Address of the White House
Synonyms for the verb negate
Date of assassination of president John Kennedy
Causes of death of Kennedy, Jr.
Name of the CEO of Coca Cola Co.
Citation for latest article published by Bilal & Wang
Meaning of IEEE
Calories of an average size bagel
Conversion formula from Centigrade to Fahrenheit
A review of the movie Fahrenheit 911