Library research

2009-02-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you spend hours at your local library wishing there were just a few more books on the botany of some deep dark jungle so you can poison your adventurer heroine and have the brainy (but attractive) research scientist save her with his latest discovery.

Although research is the core of work at colleges and universities, it never occurred to me that I could use them for my personal research until I returned to school at Kent State.

Kent's collection is well over a million volumes, and where I once scrounge my local library's shelves for books on English history, there are hundreds here -- some of them long out of print -- and if I took one out today I woudn't have to return it until September, 2009!

And in Ohio, the university libraries can share materials through a program called OhioLink, so my borrowing privleges at Kent mean the materials from every member college and university are available to me too.

As near as I can determine, anyone can come in and use the library's materials on the premises. But Kent also has a community borrower program where, for a $30 annual fee, anyone over the age of 16 can borrow their materials too. There are rules, of course, and, under some circumstances the fee can be waived.

If you have a college or university in your community it might be worth a phone call to see if they have a policy to allow borrowing privileges to outsiders. Or check with your alma mater. It's quite possible that, as a former student, their materials (and access to the materials of other institutions) are available to you.

An introduction...

2009-02-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

My name is Barbara Satow and I am currently enrolled in Kent State University's Library Science program. I am also the author of one published novel, A Game of Pleasure, which is set in Regency England. I did a lot of research for this book, but especially if your a member of RWA's Beau Monde chapter, you know there's always more to learn about a period in history

As I work my way through the SLIS program, I'm astounded at the number of information resources available worldwide that I had no clue about. It's my hope to share this sort of information with fellow writers (and, if you have your own inside sources of information, please don't hesitate to share...). Information professionals (or ordinary information junkies) are also welcome. Anything (and everything) you do to make a writer's life easier is always appreciated.

The Informed Novelist

Library research

An introduction...