Making Use of Resources - A College Library Tour

At a certain point, you may want to go do research yourself. You may find that, as thorough as I try to be with my research, I may not cover what you need. Covering even what's only available on the internet is a huge task.

Outside the internet, libraries are obviously your next best alternative. I personally advise going to a government or college library, as they have incredible resources beyond what your average local library can provide.

Let's look at some of the resources my own college library had available:

• Books
• Periodicals
• Microfiche
• Government Documents

Books

Obviously a library would have books. But at my local college library, what I found was a good three floors of books on all variety of topics. For example, in the middle of one room I found books on Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the very same room, a collection of essays on video games.

Man of these are books which you wouldn't find in a local library. A quick perusal of some books on a nearby shelf revealed books from the 1960s, the 1950s, and one set of books all the way back from the 1890s. You might be able to find books published during the very time period you're searching for. Firsthand accounts are always some of the most valuable sources of information you can get.

Periodicals

Magazines, journals and other frequent publications often contain valuable information. This valuable information, however, may often be missed or ignored. It may be impossible to find older editions of a periodical in question, or you may not even realize that there were publications covering the topic you are searching for. 

But at library, they keep records of these publications in the periodicals section. Books containing the contents of several editions of a particular publication are organized by topic and year. It helps to have what you're looking for in mind when you search through these.

Microfiche

Microfiche is a method by which books and documents are condensed and stored in a very small area. Tiny thumbnails of pages are printed on clear celluloid, allowing whole books to be shrunk down to a series of sheets no bigger than a large index card.

The only downside to microfiche is that they require the use of a special reader that is able to project the actual page to a readable size.

Note: Depending on the collection you're searching through, the microfiche you're searching for may in fact be available online. Check the catalog of the library you're searching to see if they have it available.

Government Documents

Government documents are all manner of things, including but not limited to:

• Public laws
• Government censuses
• Lists of patents 
• Geological surveys
• Letters by delegates to Congress
• Statistics reports on all manner of topics
• Scientific reports by government agencies

And really, that's just scratching the surface. Not everything may be useful if you're just looking for basic information and not statistics (unless your character would be knowledgeable about such things), but there's plenty there that is helpful, and it's worth checking out.

Overall, a full college library is an incredibly valuable resource. I highly recommend you make use of that resource while researching information for your character, if it is ever available to you.