How to Research Almost Anything: A Canadian Guide for Students, Consumers and Business. 3rd ed.

John D. Blackwell is the reference librarian and collections coordinator
of the Goldfarb Library at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

Researching has become an essential life skill in the Information Age.
This guide (previous editions were published under the title Finding
Canadian Facts Fast) offers the layperson a rudimentary road map for
locating information on a wide variety of subjects. Stephen Overbury, a
veteran journalist, teacher, and private investigator, and Susanna
Buenaventura provide pithy, commonsense advice.

The introduction sketches out the fundamentals of effective research:
acquiring an overview; formulating and refining questions; starting with
secondary versus primary information; using the telephone; evaluating
sources; obtaining referrals; and conducting research as a social skill.

Part 1 of the book is based on interviews with Canadian experts in
various fields (e.g., librarianship, the Internet, science, fiction,
genealogy, history, the law, journalism). Written with all the suspense
of a mystery novel, these narratives reveal as much about the mindset of
researching as about techniques for “the hunt.” The chapter
“Police Interviewing and Interrogating” is particularly memorable.

Part 2 presents a more nuts-and-bolts approach to specific information
resources (i.e., libraries; local, provincial, and federal government
sources; and court records). This portion of the book covers many
important sources, but often with astonishing brevity. Anyone doing
in-depth research will want to consult more specialized handbooks.
Nevertheless, Overbury and Buenaventura effectively demonstrate that
information is a valuable and powerful commodity, available to everybody
and capable of improving one’s life in numerous ways.

Readers will be especially disappointed by the guide’s cursory
treatment of electronic sources. There is a short chapter on computer
information, as well as scattered references to Web sites and CD-ROMs
throughout the rest of the book. However, it fails to convey the breadth
of useful information currently available on the Internet (good research
must encompass all pertinent information sources, no matter what their
media). Finally, although the guide has a useful index, it lacks a
bibliography or even adequate bibliographic citations within the text.

In future, as the information landscape is transformed at an
accelerating rate, this research guide will require updating more
frequently than every five or ten years. Otherwise, it will become
irrelevant.