Beasley's Guide to Library Research. Rev. ed.

John D. Blackwell is Academic Funding & Research Officer at St. Francis
Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and the co-author of
Canadian Studies: A Guide to the Sources (which can be found at
http://www.iccs-ciec.ca/blackwell.html).

David Beasley served for 28 years as a reference librarian at the New
York Research Libraries and is the author of more than a dozen books.
Beasley’s Guide to Library Research is a slightly revised edition of
his How to Use a Research Library (1988).

“[I]ntended for the college student, the casual researcher, and the
professional researcher and writer,” the guide contains much practical
information for those navigating the complex environment of the research
library. Whether one needs to know how to use interlibrary loan
services, how card catalogues are filed, or how to deal with rules and
librarians, Beasley provides the answer. Much of the book reads like a
library school textbook; however, his examples of “Research in
Depth” imaginatively capture the intellectual sleuthing required
during the search for specialized information.

Canadian readers will be frustrated by the predominantly American focus
of this book. In the appendix, “World’s Major Research Libraries and
Methods of Approach,” for instance, Beasley discusses the Library of
Parliament rather than the National Library of Canada. He seems not to
appreciate that the former is only a legislative library with very
limited public access and, unlike the Library of Congress, does not
perform the dual role of a legislative and national library.

The most disappointing aspect of this book, however, is its inadequate
treatment of the virtual research library. Although Beasley mentions
CD-ROMs, databases, and the Internet, he does not begin to address the
rich array of electronic indexes, abstracts, bibliographies, and
full-text resources available in today’s research library. Many
traditional paper sources are now available free or via subscription on
the Internet, and the research library provides an essential gateway to
these on-line publications (e.g., National Union Catalog [sic] of
Manuscript Collections <http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html> and
documents of the European Union <http://europa.eu. int/index_en.htm>).

One hopes that there will be a third edition of the guide with a more
up-to-date approach and a more Canadian perspective. In the meantime,
such standard works as Thomas Mann’s The Oxford Guide to Library
Research (1998) are indispensable and have not been superseded.