Know It All, Find It Fast: An A‐Z Source Guide for the Enquiry Desk

Citation

Line, M.B. (2003), "Know It All, Find It Fast: An A‐Z Source Guide for the Enquiry Desk", The Electronic Library, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 67-68. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470310462498

This book is “intended as a first point of reference for library staff unfamiliar with the subject of the enquiry. It is aimed at general library staff … .” So why does the title begin “Know it all” – which is impossible anyway? And why does it say a “guide for the enquiry desk” if it is aimed at “general library staff” (whoever they are)? Why are such people on the enquiry desk anyway? As for “find it fast”, well, sometimes yes, often no.

Each entry in the alphabetical sequence starts with “typical questions”. Such questions as (to take three at random) “I need help keeping my accounts”, “How many women are there in higher education” and “Have you any old maps of Bulgaria?” may be typical in some libraries, but I cannot help wondering where they are. The first (which is not actually a question) is hardly answerable by use of a quick reference guide, whereas the last surely requires reference to the catalogue of the library, which is most unlikely to have such maps unless it is a substantial research library. Most of the questions, if they are indeed “typical”, are typical of public library users; certainly they resemble only remotely the kind of enquiry I was faced with in my own experience as a reader service librarian in an academic library.

That said, the book should prove very useful for less experienced staff – and at times for experienced staff too, since no‐one can know or remember every source of information. The c.150 entries range from “Cars and the motor industry” to “Grants and funding”, from “Animals and pets” to “Jobs”, from “Beers and brewing” to “Theses and dissertations”. Most entries give pointers as to “Where to look”, which has both printed and electronic sources (but no telephone numbers of key organisations). There is no index, but the contents pages include words and phrases that lead to relevant entries (e.g. “Asylum” directs you to “Nationality and immigration”). I could find little fault with the entries for subjects with which I am familiar, so evidently the authors have done their job thoroughly and well. Deficiencies can, of course, be found: to take a few examples, a 1992 Historic houses, castles and gardens open to the public isn’t much use to intending visitors, the “History and archaeology” and “Literature” entries are very heavily biased towards the UK, and direction to a Web site that gives up‐to‐date information about government ministers would be useful.

The book might be dismissed as a sort of poor man’s Walford, but that would be wrong. It fills an empty niche, and I would expect it to be quite heavily used. In that case, to make one last criticism, why it is not issued in hard covers? The paper is stout enough, but I can’t see the paper covers surviving very long. Perhaps the publishers and authors hope the demand will be sufficient to justify a new edition in a couple of years. I hope so too.