Directories, Almanacs, Periodicals, Indexes, and Encyclopedias

Section 3

 
Directories, Almanacs, Periodicals, Indexes, and Encyclopedias -joke

In this Section:

Chapter 15: Directories

This very useful text authored by Lawrence Rasie complements Michael Lavin's Business Information. It is not intended to describe sources, but instead lists business sources usually with address and telephone numbers plus other resources, including electronic formats (CD-ROM and on-line) and microfilm, which are not included in Lavin's book (see also Chapter 19).

According to Rasie, business sources now appear in a bewildering variety. You must choose among business newspapers, business journals, on-line indexes, on-line abstracts of articles, on-line full-text copies of articles, CD-ROM indexes, CD-ROM abstracts of articles, CD-ROM full-text copies of articles, plus microfilm copies of materials, and more.

Chapter 16: Almanacs

The World Almanac, which is completely revised each year, was first published in 1868 and has been published every year since 1886, with the goal of making it a "compendium of universal knowledge." According to the publisher, this book is the most comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date information source on the market today, boasting nearly 1,000 fact-filled pages. The "General Index" alone is 29 pages of pretty small print-that's a lot of information. The subjects of that information can be seen in the table of contents below. The book includes 16 pages of color news photos and 16 pages of color maps and flags.

One "quick thumb" index divides the book into nine categories:
The World Almanac

Chapter 17: Selected Business Periodicals

Fortune magazine is probably the best all-around business periodical in the United States, if not the world. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Fortune is now the No. 1 business biweekly, which fits neatly with the editors' mission statement: to become "the best magazine in the world which happens to be about business." Toward that end they have worked to increase the utility, the relevance, and the entertainment value of everything they do. The cover stories are colorful and informative. One example is "Killer Strategies That Make Shareholders Rich."

From Nike to Home Depot to Harley-Davidson, the companies that do best for their stockholders thrive by taking risks, breaking the rules-being mavericks. In fact, says the author, a leading strategy guru (Gary Hamel), the ability to "reinvent" the basis of competition within an industry will prove the next competitive advantage.

Chapter 18: Indexes and Bibliographic Sources

The Business Periodicals Index is dedicated to business periodicals, 604 of them to be exact. That's not all there are to be sure, but it's a good start. Look up almost any subject matter in business and if it's been written about (since January 1958) you should find the citations and an annotation of the article in the BPI. Disk data only go back to June 1982, and abstracts back to June 1990.
These homely blue-covered indexes are pure reference function-no pictures, no graphs, essentially no fun. Nevertheless, they are a very important source, found in almost all libraries. You don't need to have a CD-ROM, or go on-line or through other machinations, although such services are provided by the publisher. The BPI is published monthly, except August, with a bound cumulation each quarter and year. It is a cumulative index to English-language periodicals. Selection of periodicals (395 at this date, taken from a list of 522) for indexing is accomplished by subscriber vote represented by the Committee on Wilson Indexes of the American Library Association's Reference and Adult Services Division.

Chapter 19: Encyclopedias

This encyclopedia is an anthology of 435 signed articles (between 1,000 and 5,000 words each) on topics dealing with, among other things, business ethics; political, social, and legal theory; trends; summaries of leading concepts; and biographical entries. Subjects range alphabetically from abortion to work.

The Encyclopedia of Ethics, edited by Laurence and Charlotte Becker, is an extremely handy reference piece on those so-called philosophical subjects that almost always seem to cause controversy. I say "so-called" because few of us would consider ourselves philosophers, yet most would never hesitate to give a person our opinion on abortion, Martin Luther King, happiness, charity, Sartre, child abuse, or war, to name but a few topics. The authors have given careful attention to theories of rational choice and economic analysis; feminist ethics; virtue theory; and moral psychology. The encyclopedia also includes a 13-part, multi-authored, 60,000-word history of ethics from the pre-Socratics through the first nine decades of the 20th century. Each article has a bibliography and the usual cross-references. See-also references are supplemented with two indexes: an analytical index of the text of the articles and an index of authors cited in the bibliographies. The article is signed at the end by its author.

CALVIN AND HOBBES  1998 Watterson Dist. by UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

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Directories, Almanacs, Periodicals, Indexes, and Encyclopedias