MISCELLANEOUS WORKS
LIPPINCOTT'S NEW GAZETTEER A geographical dictionary of the world.
THE CENTURY ATLAS With classified references to places.
THE HANDY REFERENCE ATLAS Small size (octavo); a most useful book for the desk or library table.
PLOETZ'S EPITOME OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY A very compact epitome of history, with all the important dates.
NOTES AND QUERIES A periodical devoted to notes and queries on a multitude of curious and out-of-the-way facts; yearly index volumes are issued.
BIBLIOGRAPHIES ISSUED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
SONNENSCHEIN'S THE BEST BOOKS A guide to about fifty thousand of the best available books in a great variety of fields, classified by subject.
Make yourself familiar with all of these books which are within your reach. Get into the habit, when you have a few minutes to spare, of taking them down from the shelves and turning over the pages to see what they contain. And whenever a question of fact comes up in general talk, make a mental note of it, or better, one in writing, and the next time you go to the library hunt it up in one of these reference books. You will be surprised to see, when once you have made the habit, how short a time it takes to settle disputes about most facts; and at the same time you will be extending your general knowledge.
In learning the use of these and other books, do not forget the most important source of all, the librarian. The one guiding principle of modern librarianship is to make the books useful; and it gives every proper librarian active pleasure to show you how to use the books in his charge.
In using books and magazines scrutinize the character of the source. Is it impartial or partisan? Is its treatment of the subject exhaustive and definite, or cursory and superficial? Does the author know the subject at first hand, or does he rely on other men? On such points the second book or article will be easier to estimate than the first, and the third than the second; for with each new source you have the earlier ones as a basis for comparison. In any case do not trust to a single authority: no matter how authoritative it is, sooner or later the narrow basis of your views will betray itself, for an argument which is merely a revamping of some one else's views is not likely to have much spontaneity.
In many subjects, and especially those of new or local interest, you will not find the facts gathered and assimilated for you; you must go out and gather your own straw for the making of your bricks. Such are most questions of reform or change in school or college systems, in athletics, in municipal affairs, in short, most of the questions on which the average man after he leaves college is likely to be making arguments.
To get decisive facts on such questions as these you must go, in the case of local subjects, to the newspapers, to city and town reports, or to documents issued by interested committees; for college questions you go to the presidents' reports and to annual catalogues or catalogues of graduates, or perhaps to Graduates' Bulletins or Weeklies; for athletic questions you go to the files of the daily newspapers, or for records to such works as the World or Tribune Almanacs; for school questions you go to school catalogues, or to school-committee reports. You will be surprised to find how little time you use to get together bodies of facts and figures that may make you, in a small way, an original authority on the subject you are discussing. It does not take long to count a few hundred names, or to run through the files of a newspaper for a week or a month; and when you have done such investigation you get a sense of surety in dealing with your subject that will strengthen your argument. Here, as in the larger discussions of later life, the readiness to take the initiative and the ingenuity in thinking of possible sources are what make you count.
Such sources you can often piece out by personal inquiry from men who are conversant with the subject—town or city officers, members of faculties, principals of schools. If you go to such people hoping that they will do your work for you, you will not be likely to get much comfort; but if you are keen about your subject yourself, and ready to work, you will often get not only valuable information and advice, but sometimes also a chance to go through unpublished records. A young man who is working hard and intelligently is apt to be an object of interest to older men who have been doing the same all their lives.
EXERCISES
1. Name those of the sources on pages 34-36, which are available to you. Report to the class on the scope and character of each of them. (The report on different sources can be divided among the class.)
2. Name some sources for facts relating to your own school or college; to your own town or city; to your own state.
3. Report on the following, in not more than one hundred words, naming the source from which you got your information: the situation and government of the Fiji Islands; Circe; the author of "A man's a man for a' that"; Becky Sharp; the age of President Taft and the offices he has held; the early career of James Madison; the American amateur record in the half-mile run; the family name of Lord Salisbury, and a brief account of his career; the salary of the mayor of New York; the island of Guam: some of the important measures passed by Congress in the session of 1910-1911. (This exercise a teacher can vary indefinitely by turning over the pages of reference books which his class can reach; or the students can be set to making exercises for each other.)
14. Bibliography. Before starting in earnest on the reading for your argument, begin a bibliography, that is, a list of the books and articles and speeches which will help you. This bibliography should be entered in your notebook, and it is convenient to allow space enough there to keep the different kinds of sources separate. In making your bibliography you will use some of the sources which have just been described, especially "Poole's Index," and "The Reader's Guide," and the subject catalogue of the library. Make your entries so full that you can go at once to the source; it is poor economy to save a minute on copying down a title, and then waste ten or fifteen in going back to the source from which you got it. On large subjects the number of books and articles is far beyond the possibilities of most courses in argumentation, and here you must exercise your judgment in choosing the most important. The name of the author is on the whole a safe guide: if you find an article or a book by President Eliot on an educational subject, or one by President Hadley on economics, or one by President Jordan on zoology, or one by any of them on university policy, you will know at once that you cannot afford to neglect it. As you go on with your reading you will soon find who are authorities on special subjects by noting who are quoted in text and footnotes. If the subject happens to be one of those on which a bibliography has been issued either by the Library of Congress or from some other source, the making of your own bibliography will reduce itself to a selection from this list.
Keep your bibliography as a practical aid to you in a very practical task. Do not swell it from mere love of accumulation, as you might collect stamps. The making of exhaustive bibliographies is work for advanced scholarship or for assistant librarians. For the practical purposes of making an argument a very moderate number of titles beyond those you can actually use will give you sufficient background.
Notebook. Enter in your notebook the titles of books, articles, or speeches which bear on your subject, and which you are likely to be able to read.
Illustration. Bibliography for an argument on introducing commission government of the Des Moines type into Wytown.