Question of the Day 12/26/2007
I need three book resources that "can't be encyclopedias" and 3 websites that have to be from "institutional or governmental sites" on Robert Owen. He had to do with the New Harmony utopian community.
My approach with this question was to draw the patron into knowledge about what reasonable things we have to meet this demand and how to find them. First I found we didn't have books with Robert Owen as the subject. I did a quick search in Polaris for utopias (always lean towards the plural unless it's animals. (try it. punch in quicksearch giraffe 163 results -- versus punching in quicksearch giraffes 73 hits...) and you get one neat hit (The Palgrave companion to North American utopias) to pick at for other subject headings. Utopias is an easy enough word to explain to use but when you look at the subject headings for this book it includes Collective settlements -- North America. Communal living -- North America. Utopias -- North America. Scavenging through these as keywords I got several other books which she checked out.
And they occurred in the 335 and 307.7 areas. We went to Ref in 307 and there is a fantastic set Encyclopedia of community : from the village to the virtual world (Sage 2003) and it had a very large section on him, the community New Harmony and of course... the reason why encyclopedias are helpful... the list of related works at the end of the article. Not to mention the high quality of information on the subject.
I showed the parent a 1 volume encyclopedia and said this is what your teacher means when they say not to use an Encyclopedia. The son was over at the photocopier making copies of the Sage set and then I showed her the various magazine links off of wccls.org like Academic Search Elite, SIRS and Student Researcher. Academic was the best, Student Research Center was second best, and SIRS was not as good as the other two.
Jill A
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