Tech Biz Writing

In these heady days of the so-called information revolution, data is everywhere. Data means power, and data has gone democratic — at a price.

This section will consider information from three broad standpoints:

* Printed information available from libraries or other sources.
* Verbal information imparted by personal contacts.
* Visual information — we will include e-data (websites etc) in this category.

We shall also discuss information gathering in general, and we’ll examine the restrictions placed by law on sources of information, namely, copyright.

Libraries
Many large organisations maintain extensive libraries on technical subjects for the benefit of authors working in their Technical Publications department. No private company library, however, is likely to measure up to all demands placed upon it, and it is often necessary for a writer to approach a large public library in search of information. This applies even more to the freelance or student, whose personal resources will be limited.

There are two things an author needs to know in this respect:

* How to handle the organization of large collections of books and manuscripts.
* What assistance is available to make a search more efficient.

To begin at the top with the National Library of Great Britain: The British Library. This venerable, if somewhat chaotic, institution has now moved from Bloomsbury to St. Pancras, where its vastly expensive block of newish buildings is already inadequate for the task. The part which concerns us most is the Science, Technology and Business department. Formerly the Science Reference Library, and before that the National Reference Library of Science and Invention, it’s housed at 96 Euston Road and encompasses, engineering, business information on companies, markets and products, physical sciences and technologies; British, European and Patent Co-operation Treaty patents and trade marks. The catalogues for all this can be found on the website: www.opac97.bl.uk. The general British Library site is at: www.bl.uk.

The Research and Development department takes in an earlier and similar organisation. Another useful branch, which can be accessed via your local library’s out-of-area borrowing service, is the Lending Division at Wetherby in Yorkshire, which also holds the former National Lending Library for Science and Technology.

If, as is usually the case, the research is not weighty enough to justify lengthy sabbaticals browsing among the splendours of the British Library, it’s often possible to gain access to other sources via numerous websites in the comfort of your own home or office. A number of Oxford University sites have come on stream recently, such as askoxford.com. The OUP site is also worth a try.

Several specialized information services in the UK, available mainly by subscription, are worth bearing in mind, though this is a rapidly changing field, and some of the following may be out-of-date:

CICRIS at Acton Public Library is an amalgam of college, industrial and municipal libraries in West London.
HERTIS at Hatfied College of Technology (now University of Hertfordshire) undertakes consultancy, desk research, and postal interlibrary loans and has a capacity for up to 300 subscribing companies and organisations.
HULTIS at Hull Public Library.
NANTIS at Nottingham Public Library.
LADSIRIAC at Liverpool City Libraries, now known as Business and Technology Reference Library, has an extensive stock dealing with all aspects of science, commerce and technology, including British and European standards, patents and trade directories.
LETIS at Leicester Public Library.
ASLIB is the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux, and is a national organisation supporting local branches. The ASLIB directory is worth consulting as a guide to the location of special reference material.

Any large collection of books requires a method of classification. Without this, the task of finding any one publication, or a number of publications dealing with the same subject, would be almost impossible.

Next: 18. Library Classification Systems

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Technical Writing, TechBiz Writing, Documentation, Design, Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.