Blood
at the Source: Research
Tips for Mystery Writers
Barbara
Fister
This selective guide is more about how to get the most out of libraries and the Web than about specific sources. I've limited its scope to contemporary matters - primarily to do with crime, criminal justice, and general research - and there is a U.S. emphasis, particularly in the section on government documents. I've included in an epilogue a few links to information about mysteries and the book world, but that's not the focus of this guide.
Blood at the Source is arranged as a single page, but the contents should help you find what you need quickly. Or use your browser's "find" command to seek out a particular word or phrase. I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have for additions or corrections.
|
Contents taming
librarians what
is - and isn't on the Web wondering
what to read next? |
USING LIBRARIES
If you think libraries are baffling places, you're not alone. Computer catalogs offer options the old card catalogs never had, but they can be utterly confusing. Academic and public libraries often shelve things differently. And now so much of what the library offers is electronic - and each option has its own quirky interface which, the minute you think you've got the hang of it, is upgraded to offer even more confusing features. To make it worse, when you go into a library you've never used before everyone but you knows exactly what they're doing. Actually they don't. They either got help some time ago, they've spent a lot of time working it out on their own, or they're faking it. Don't be intimidated. Libraries exist to be used by people like you. Ask for help. Here are some suggestions for getting the most out of reference librarians:
Many libraries offer reference services via e-mail or by electronic chat. If you can't find what you need locally, you might want to avail yourself of these "virtual reference" services but be sure to read the fine print, explain as clearly as you can exactly what you need, and be prepared to pay photocopying charges if applicable. Don't expect immediate gratification. Academic libraries - particularly at schools that have a criminal justice program - have great stuff for mystery writers. If there is a college or university library in your area, you usually are welcome to use it even if it's a private institution. There may be limits to what you can check out and in some cases you have to pay a nominal fee. Urban academic libraries tend to be more security-conscious by necessity that rural ones. But librarians, as a rule, like to share. You can usually find out from their Web site what to expect as an unaffiliated researcher. Students and faculty are an academic library's primary clientele. Try to use the computers when students aren't lining up for them. (Mornings and Saturdays are a good bet; after ten p.m. is when most students really gear up. There will be a greater crush near the end of a term than at the beginning.) And if you're working with a reference librarian, offer to wait if a student starts to hover nearby. Public libraries, except for large urban ones, tend to be less research-oriented, but most are linked to other libraries and can get you what you need, even if it's highly specialized. Ask about interlibrary loan. If you use a library a lot, think about joining its Friends group. This is not philanthropy, it's a very cunning plan; friends of Libraries are usually friends of authors, too. Once you've located a library, you still have to find the books. Libraries don't deliberately hide them, but catalogs can be difficult to use. Here are some hints:
Reference books deserve special mention. There are incredibly cool things in the reference section. Swing by the reference desk to find out what's are available on the topics of interest to you. Typically, the editor of a specialized encyclopedia will find out who is a leading expert on a topic and ask him or her to write an article on it. You're getting the lowdown straight from someone who knows the topic inside out. Better yet, at the end of the article there's a bibliography of the most important books on the subject so you can follow up. Here are some examples to whet your appetite - though not every library has these titles, it gives you a sense of the possibilities. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics. 4 vols. (San Diego, CA: Academic, 1998) Cozy or noir, mysteries often engage ethical dilemmas. This amazing work takes all kinds of social issues - real world stuff that makes the newspapers daily - and unpacks the ethical conundrums behind them. Balanced, informative, and full of fascinating insights into the messy world we live in. Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice. 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2002) Covers issues in law, criminology, and sociology; includes references to classic studies and recent research for further digging. Though the focus tends to emphasis the US, international perspectives are included. This is a long-awaited update of a work published in the 1980s. Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment. 4 vols. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002) Covers a huge range of topics in an accessible manner. If you want to take a break from writing while feeling virtuously on task, spend some time with this set. It may give you an idea for your next book. Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior. 4 vols. (Philadelphia: Brunner-Routledge, 2001) Covers theoretical concepts, crime and juvenile delinquency, sexual deviance, and your garden-variety self-destructive behavior. This is a good place to find out what the experts are saying about people behaving badly. Especially nifty if you want to need some big words for a behavioral scientist character to throw around. Encyclopedia of Forensic Sciences. 3 vols. (San Diego, CA: Academic, 2000) The most comprehensive reference work for the field; there's also an electronic version available in some libraries. Encyclopedia of Psychology. 8 vols. (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000) Want a quick rundown on just about any aspect of quirky human behavior, but don't have time to read a hundred articles? Analyze this. These links provide annotations and reviews of current books in the field, sorted by topic. You'll also find book reviews in many criminal justice periodicals. Book 'Em A special issue of Law Enforcement News listing short reviews of notable books published primarily in 2002 and 2003, sorted by topic. A previous special issue, Central Booking, covered books published 2000 - 2001. Law Enforcement News was published for many years by John Jay College of Criminal Justice, but sadly it has gone to the morgue. Crime Scene Investigation Books (Crime Scene Investigator) Claims to be the most complete listing of crime scene books on the web, both technical and popular. Includes summaries. In addition to the catalog, libraries typically have a dizzying array of electronic databases. These include databases to specialized information by discipline and interdisciplinary databases of magazine and/or newspaper articles. Some include the full text of articles, some merely citations and perhaps abstracts, others a mix of full text, citations, and abstracts. They will include material that isn't available in a particular library, but those may be available through interlibrary loan. Check with a reference librarian or visit a library's Web site to see which databases they have. Chances are your public library may provide online access to a wealth of databases from your home. With some exceptions, I can't link to them here because they are licensed to particular libraries for fee - often a very large fee. (Did I mention joining your library's Friends group? These resources are great, but they chew through library budgets.) Technically, a guest to the library may not be covered in a license agreement with the database vendor. That's not usually an issue - most vendors have learned to live with the fact that libraries entertain guests - but be forewarned it could be a problem in some cases. Here are a few databases of particular note for mystery writers. Criminal Justice Abstracts. Provides summaries of articles and reports in the field, from 1968 to the present. Tends to focus on research-based articles. But hey, you want to hear from the experts, right? Criminal Justice Periodicals Index. Full text of 59 core publications plus summaries for the contents of 100 others. Includes practical information for professionals as well as more theoretical articles. Lexis/Nexis. Like a Chinese puzzle ball, this service is a seemingly-endless set of nested databases. Of particular note: full text newspaper coverage, law review articles, and arcane industry newsletters. (There is a much more limited free version availble, but it only samples current US political news.) If your library doesn't have this resource, it may have other databases covering similar ground, such as Proquest Newsstand. For all the news that isn't mainstream, try Ethnic NewsWatch or the Alternative Press Index. These offer valuable perspectives you might otherwise miss. Medline (via PubMed) Free to the entire world courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, this amazing database offers abstracts and sometimes links to full text of articles about medicine. Millions of them. (Cool tip: click on the "limits" tab and select "free full text" if you are impatient and want it now.) From here, you can also choose your poison by accessing the TOXLINE toxicology database. These articles are usually highly technical. A separate archive called PubMed Central contains the full text of many life sciences journals. NCJRS
Abstracts Database. Over 190,000 abstracts of
research publications from the 1970s to the present are searchable here
from the National Criminal Justice Research Service; thousands have
links to full text. Organized
Crime and Corruption Database. From the Nathonson
Centre for the Study of Organized Crime and Corruption at York
University (Canada), this database includes annotations for books,
articles, and reports on worldwide organized crime up to 2005. Because
many of the entries cite older publications, this database could be
particularly useful for historical research. PsycInfo. Want to find out what the latest research says about your villain's psychotic behavior? How your hero's PTSD might interfere with his love life? Go nuts with PsycInfo, the database formerly known as Psychological Abstracts. The most complete database of psychology literature, including books, articles, and dissertations, with abstracts. At some libraries selected articles are in full text, but most entries offer summaries only. Still, you get the juicy bits and if you need the gory details, you can seek out the original source. Social Sciences Index. Covers core journals in the social sciences; some libraries have this database with abstracts included. For more complete coverage of research in the field of sociology, try SocioFile (the online version of Sociological Abstracts) of Social Sciences Citation Index (which sometimes goes by the alias Web of Science). WorldCat. The Mondo-Catalog. Merges the catalogs of over fifty thousand libraries around the world that own over a billion books. Find out what a writer wrote, whether a title has been used already (it has, but don't let that stop you) and how many libraries bought your last book. You should realize, though, it's not a total count - not every library lists their books here, and not every library catalogs all of their books. Still - it's big. Very big. And recently they've incorporated references to articles, as well. The results include a handy citation gadget that will format a reference for you and also a map to the nearest library. However, check locally first - some libraries are not included, and when it says the nearest copy is 76 miles away it could be fibbing. Though most journals for researchers and law enforcement practitioners are only available in print or by subscription, some offer at least some of their contents online. Check with your local library to see if specific journals are available in full text, or try this excellent directory. Criminal Justice Resources: Periodicals Available Over the Web An annotated list by John Harrison, Criminal Justice Specialist at the Michigan State University Libraries. special collections and services Federal government documents are terrific sources of information and there are document depositories all over the country for citizens to use. They can be confusing, so definitely ask a documents librarians for help. Docs librarians also keep up with what's available from governments on the Web. Some depositories limit their collection to materials they think their communities need most, but every region of the country has a major depository. Libraries often have special collections of rare books, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings and videos. In addition, they often have amazing things on microfilm ranging from newspaper backfiles to collections of political pamphlets, posters, or zines. Cool stuff. Don't let the microfilm machines scare you off. They're actually much easier to use than your VCR. If a library doesn't have a book or article you need, staff are likely to be able to get it for you through interlibrary loan. Ask if it's an option and how it works. Finally, if you'd rather have someone else do your research and you made a killing on your last book, there are information firms that will provide research services. One that I am aware of that specialize in helping writers of fiction is Research Solutions. Lloyd Sealy Library,
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City. If
it's about criminal justice and you can't find it here - it's probably
just checked out. This treasure has 300.000 volumes, the majority of
which are sociology and criminal justice sources, including otherwise
difficult-to-locate reports from organizations and police agencies and
a fabulous array of specialized databases. They also have special
collections such as New York criminal courts trial transcripts from the
1890's through the post World War I years. Unaffiliated researchers can
make arrangements to use the library by contacting the reference desk
by phone (212) 237-8247 or by e-mail. New York
Public Library Humanities and Social Sciences Library. When
you've finished your work at John Jay, take the subway down to 42nd and
visit the Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue. You
can't miss it: look for the lions. (Their names - Patience and
Fortitude - are just what every researcher needs.) The library is open
to all. You can't go into the stacks, but that doesn't matter because
books here are shelved by size, not subject. The library has an
interesting mix of popular and research materials and a fantastic
collection of newspapers on microfilm with indexes. Other research
divisions include Science, Industry, and Business, the Library for the
Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture. Incidentally, NYPL serves three of the city's five boroughs;
Queens and Brooklyn have their own, quite wonderful library systems. Library of Congress. It's a bit more of a hassle to use LC than NYPL - you have to get a Reader's Card in the neighboring Madison Building - but the extraordinary collection and the top-notch reference librarians are well worth the trouble. Like the NYPL Humanities and Social Sciences Library, you can't go into the stacks, but you can virtually browse by call number using their online catalog, which can really expand a search. The Web page for LC says "more than a library" - and, yes, their digital collections are great - but the library itself is a public treasure. You can take a tour and see exhibits without a Reader's Card - but you'll only get to peer down at researchers in the famous round reading room and envy those few, those industrious few who got their cards. Don't leave DC without it. Thomas Mann. The Oxford Guide to Library Research. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. By one of the above-mentioned top-notch Library of Congress reference librarians. He knows his stuff and offers several different approaches, all of them grounded in experience. This new edition is well worth the price. Incidentally, Mann started out as a private investigator. For a more detailed description, see the entry in the OUP catalog. The only people who think everything is on the Internet haven't used it much - typically, elected officials and college administrators who are so computer illiterate they have to have their secretaries print out their e-mail for them. Or people whose definition of "everything" is limited to what they can buy on eBay. It's not all there. Not by a long shot. Nevertheless, the Internet is an essential research tool. Frustrating, goofy, full of technical glitches, and beset by annoying pop-up advertising - but essential. Sort of like libraries, come to think of it, except for the advertising. what is - and isn't - on the Web The Web is good for some things, not so good for others. If you're looking for information on current events, the law, computers, popular culture, guns, organizations, government affairs or whacked-out conspiracy theories, the web offers a lot; if you're looking for anything that someone might have reason to believe is marketable, you aren't as likely to find it on the Web. That's because intellectual property is - well, property. Why give it away for free if it's your bread and butter? Libraries make intellectual property available to you for free, but only because they already paid for it. The US Constitution recognizes that a balance has to be struck between encouraging production of art and knowledge and the social benefits of making it widely available. Concepts of first sale and fair use preserve that balance. Mystery writers usually don't object to seeing their books bought by libraries and shared widely; the payoff comes in attracting a wider readership who might buy their next book. Most academics, on the other hand, give away their copyright to the journals that publish their work because those starry-eyed idealists want to spread knowledge and (let's get real) they need the cred for tenure. They don't always understand that those publishers charge money for those journals. Lots and lots of money in some cases. (If you want to see an academic librarian spontaneously burst into flames, just say "oh by the way, what's the subscription rate for Tetrahedron Letters these days?") There's a movement afoot to make scholarly journal content free after a period of time (the PubMed Central archive of life science journals from the National Library of Medicine is an example) but there will always be a necessary tension between free and fee when it comes to valuable information. So there's a lot of good stuff you won't find on the Web. Except - well, it gets confusing. Many of the databases and electronic books and journals that libraries pay for are accessed through a Web browser. These are "on the Web" but they aren't free and you can't tap into them unless you're in the library or you're authenticated remotely as a library user under the terms of a particular library's license. Further, the materials in these databases aren't typically included in search engine results. One last point: Some Web sites have a limited amount of free material, but charge for "premium" or "archives" material. For example, a newspaper may make the most recent two weeks of stories available for free, but charge for older articles. Before you whip out your credit card, remember these may well be available to you through a library database. There are many search engines and they have different protocols, quirks, strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I'm used to Google and rarely use anything else. If you want a better analysis of the differences among search engines than I'm willing to provide, take a look at Greg R. Notess's Search Engine Showdown. Here are some general hints for using a search engine.
When reviewing your results, try these tricks:
You may want to save time by using a selective directory focused on your topic. These often have their own search engines, but focus your search to selected, vetted sites. Fortunately, there are many obsessive-compulsive types out there scanning the Web for good sites, and many of these directories are compiled by people who have subject expertise for evaluating their quality. crime fiction research directory In Reference to Murder. A blog focused on research tips that includes a wealth of useful links under such headings as "guns," "forensics," "police procedural," "private investigation," and more. I wish I'd thought of that. MegaLinks in Criminal Justice. The personal obsession of Dr. Thomas R. O'Connor of the Department of Justice Studies, North Carolina Wesleyan, a well organized and deep set of links to topics in the field, including police in society, evidence, forensic law, and profiling - though what a profiler would make of the dancing hotdogs, I don't know. Prentice Hall Cybrary. Maintained by Dr. Frank Schmalleger, a very busy guy, who also offers the Talk Justice online forum and Newsfeed. Selected Internet Links. These CJ sites are selected by the incredibly knowledgeable librarians at the Sealy Library, John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Nicely organized by topic, with lots of new content added regularly. Zeno's Forensic Site. An essential resource maintained by Zeno Geradts, a forensic scientist at the Netherlands Forensic Science Laboratory. Internet Public Library. A long-standing collection of useful online research tools maintained by the busy and clever library school students at Drexel. Librarians' Internet Index. An excellent selective guide to annotated Web sites that can be searched or browsed by subject. Though it comes from Califa, the California Library Exchange, its scope (and reputation) is global..You can stay in the loop by signing up for a weekly "what's new" e-mail alert. And how can you not love a web site with a URL so short you can't forget it? Just type in lii.org and off you go. Media Resource: Linking Journalists and Scientists. A highly selective list of reference sites in the sciences; part of the MediaResource site maintained by the Sigma Xi society, which provides contacts to scientists for journalists reporting on science and technology. Scout Report Archives A searchable archive of Web site information from the University of Wisconsin, with descriptive and critical reviews. These sites were chosen for their valuable research content rather than for charming flakiness. You can also sign up for weekly e-mail alerts of new reviews. WWW Virtual Library. A world-wide effort to compile expert guides to the Web - the original Web directory of directories. we're from the government . . . And we're here to help you. Really. The Web has enabled governments to distribute public information in ways never before possible. The material produced by government agencies typically is in the public domain and there's lots and lots of it. Though you may not always trust the government, one thing you can say for their Web sites is that they are quality controlled; employees can't post whatever they feel like. It's official. Of course, what's official can change when a new administration takes office. Increasingly, state and local sites have a wealth of information. Need to find out if your PI needs a license to operate in a particular state? Get information about how a state crime lab handles evidence? Find out how many domestic assaults have been reported in a particular Chicago neighborhood in the last year? Chances are, it's online. Go quickly to state sites using this formula: http://www.state.stateabbreviation.us (for example, http://www.state.il.us). City URLs are less predictable than state ones, but many can be found using this formula: http://www.ci.nameofcity.stateabbreviation.us (for example, http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us). Or use one of the portals for government information listed below. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Here you'll find reports on following illegal arms and church arson cases, among other things. Chicago Police Department. An example of a local law enforcement organization's page. The CLEARMap crime mapping program is amazing. Drug Enforcement Agency. Facts sheets on drugs, drug intelligence briefs, money laundering, and operations. There's even an online gift shop. No, they don't sell dime bags, but you can get a nice DEA hat. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Includes lots of information, including the very useful Handbook of Forensic Services, Forensic Science Communications, Law Enforcement Bulletin, and more. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Includes some research articles, a basic overview of the system, and a database of inmate information so you can find out when Cousin Bubba is due for release. (Many state departments of corrections have similar inmate information available over the Web.) Interpol. The Web site for this international organization includes information on terrorism, forensics, financial crime, and even football hooliganism. Includes fact sheets in various languages and international crime statistics. National Criminal Justice Reference Service. An information resource jointly funded by a number of federal agencies. Includes a database of criminal justice articles and reports such as Crime Scene Investigation: A Guide for Law Enforcement and Guide for Explosion and Bombing Scene Investigation. What a blast! National Institute of Justice. The research arm of the Department of Justice. Publications include reports on using DNA to solve cold cases and human smugglers. Popular Baby Names. Stumped for a character's name? Want something appropriate to the character's age? This site lists popular names by decade, by year (1880 to present), and even by state if you're looking for a regional flavor. From the Social Security Administration. US Department of Justice. Tons of stuff, from legal briefs to reports on topics such as computer crime and Waco. Wondering what kind of warrant you need for your character to seize computer records post-Patriot Act? Check out their Search and Seizure Manual - just don't hit "print" too soon; it's 256 pages long. The site includes a useful search engine that pulls up reports from many federal law enforcement agencies. Or you can take a Flash-y short training course intended for police officers on how to collect DNA evidence. general portals to online documents and public records USA.Gov. An interagency effort to provide a portal to federal and state government information of all types. Free Public Records Search. A commercial directory of US federal and local public records sources online, most of them free. GPO Access. From the Government Printing office, a portal to government information. Open CRS: Congressional Research Reports for the People. The Congressional Research Service compiles impressive reports on a wide variety of topics. Unfortunately, they aren't available to the public unless a member of Congress releases them. The Center for Democracy and Technology provides this handy central clearinghouse for over 8,000 CRS reports available on various Websites. Great stuff. University of Michigan Documents Center. A well-maintained site with links to governments of all sorts, from local to international. Because so many beans are counted by government agencies, there is a wealth of numerical data on the Web. This is just a sampler of some criminal justice and general sources for stats. If you have a specific number you can't find, ask a librarian; they keep up with where to find these things in print or online. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Lots of data on crime, victims, offenders, law enforcement, and topics such as drugs and crime. Includes the World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems, homicide trends, and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online. FedStats. A portal for all sorts of statistical data from federal Web sites. National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. An archive of data from US federal and state data files as well as data collected by researchers. For hardcore number-crunchers. Uniform Crime Reports. An annual compilation of crime data in the US compiled by the FBI. U.S. Bureau of the Census. More numbers here than you can count, and not just about population. The Census also tracks business, agriculture, transportation, and lots of social variables. you are here: finding your place on the Web Readers
love encountering a familiar place in fiction. The downside to this is
that if you put a gas station on a corner where they know there's a
flower shop, your poetic license gets revoked immediately. Never fear.
Geographic Information Systems are getting so good at helping you find
your way around, it's scary. Google Maps. Look up a city or address to get a nice, clear street map, or better yet click on "satellite" to get an aerial view (or "hybrid" to combine them). Use arrows to navigate, or zoom in and out with the zoom tool. You can even make your own maps with the "my maps" feature. Many cities have street-level images that let you ramble down a street and see what it looks like. (More below.) Mapquest. Get a street map of Anywhere, USA. Terraserver. Sattelite photos and topographical maps. on the street where you live . . . EveryBlock.
Want to know what's going on in a particular neighborhood? If it
happens to be in Chicago,
San Francisco,
or New York
you're in luck. Some enterprising programmers have teamed up with
newshounds and the terminally curious to create mashups of
public data sets, news feeds, and spatial data. You can easily set up
an RSS feed to watch what's going down on those mean streets by zip
code, neighborhood, police district, or address. Absolutely amazing. Google Street View is a new feature of Google Maps that lets you scan 360 degree views of many streets in selected cities. This has been a tad controversial as people who live on those streets notice you can zoom in on things like cats in the window or your neighbor picking his nose. But it could help you remember if there's really a gas station on that corner or not.(Note, Google, in its usual mysterious ways, doesn't tell you when the pictures were taken; they are not up-to-the-minute.) Is your city not among the chosen? There may be other sources of street-level views through the county assessor's office or a city GIS department. For example, you can see snapshots of every property in Cook County, Illinois and (with a bit of fiddling) virtually stroll down any Chicago city street, even those too scary for the Street View team. There is a great deal of statutory and case law available through the Web. In addition to the portals listed below, don't forget that your library may have additional legal materials. Lexis/Nexis, for example, has the full text of law review articles that analyze legal issues in depth and trade journals that report legal news. Findlaw. A commercial directory to law resources. Includes a handy law dictionary and a well-designed full text database of US Supreme Court decisions from 1893 to the present. Legal Information Institute, Cornell University. A great place to start. Include links to statutes and case law by jurisdiction as well as topical guides to the law. Historians, museums, and libraries are putting huge collections of primary sources on the Web. These are in the public domain, so tend to be either out-of-copyright (a.k.a. pretty old) or they are official documents that are not copyrighted. The following links are merely examples of a growing number of virtual collections. If you can't find what you want, one of the directories might help. For example, there's a fabulous WWW Virtual Library directory of history sites that includes many primary source sites by region and period. Try also Deb's Historical Research Page, which has an astonishing assortment of links. American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Libray. Extraordinary collection of texts, photos, film and audio clips from the Library of Congress. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. Documents from the 18th century to the present, carefully prepared and well-organized. EuroDocs Wiki. Selected facsimiles, translations, and transcriptions of key documents in European history. Homicide in Chicago, 1870-1930. An amazing online coded database of the records of every homicide in Chicago for sixty years compiled by researchers at Northwestern University using handwritten police reports. Includes the Haymarket affair, the race riot of 1919, deadly packinghouse strikes, Leopold and Loeb, and gangland murders connected to Al Capone. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey. Full-text access to over 100,000 trials held at London's Old Bailey between 1674 and 1834. Not only of interest for its legal content, but because of what these documents reveal about the lives of ordinary Londoners. Since the Web's earliest days, people have been putting books on the Web. Most of those available for free are old enough to be out of copyright, although there are exceptions. The book collections below are particularly helpful for full text searching to locate a half-remembered quote and for browsing contents. For more recently published books, the "search inside" feature of Amazon allows locating and viewing specific passages in thousands of books, though the pages can't be printed and you have to have made a purchase there to play. Google has a similar full-text book search, with full text access to out-of-copyright books and short snippets of newer ones. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia. Offers 70,000 electronic texts in the humanities, including many classic works. Of these, 1,800 can be downloaded to be read with the Microsoft Reader or Palm software. Making of America Books Page. Full text of over 9,000 19th century books. Especially strong in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. National Academies Press. Over 3,000 current books are available online. Among these are Firearms and Violence (2004), Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing (2004), Forensic Analysis: Weighing Bullet Lead Evidence (2004), Information Technology for Counterterrorism (2003), The Polygraph and Lie Detection (2003), Juvenile Crime, Juvenile Justice (2001), The Age of Expert Testimony (2002), Transnational Organized Crime (1999), The Evaluation of Forensic DNA Evidence (1996), and Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs (2001). The Online Books Page. Created and maintained by John Mark Ockerbloom at the University of Pennsylvania, this page provides links to thousands of freely-available e-books, most of them previously published and no longer under copyright. the good, the bad and the flaky Jacob Bronowski in The Ascent of Man said "There is no way of exchanging information that does not demand an act of judgment." In the case of the Web – and how. Not only can anybody publish anything on the Web, the clues one uses almost unconsciously to select a source - details on a title page, book jacket or in a masthead - are often missing. And because the Web is a library that collects everything from soup recipes to raving nuts, it requires more work to sort out what exactly you've turned up. Use the same questions you always use when deciding whether a print source is credible or not.
The Internet allows for rapid sharing of news, views, lies, innuendo, and everything in between, and e-mail makes it easy to regularly scan whatever frequency of human weirdness you want to monitor. The following sites can help you sound like an expert, or at least like someone who's been hanging out with experts. Some additional ways to keep up with the weird channel known as the book trade are listed in the epilogue. CJNews. A crime and justice newsfeed, constantly updated. Maintained by Frank Schmalleger, the very busy author of a widely-adopted criminal justice textbook and maintainer of the Cybrary modestly subtitled "The World's Criminal Justice Library." Google News. Offers continually updated news stories from around the world, gathered and sorted automatically. You can set up an alert to have news about a particular topic sent straight to your inbox. The Graveyard Shift - Lee Lofland's incredibly informative and very entertaining blog about police procedure, crime scene investigation, criminal law, and other nuts and bolts of interest to mystery writers. Of course, libraries and the Web can't entirely replace first-hand experience. For one thing, you don't get the smells. On the other hand, the old rule - write what you know - could be not only risky but downright illegal if what you write about is murder. But with imagination and a little help from your friends, you can fake it. Writers do well to talk to professionals in the field, visit the places they plan to write about to saturate their senses with signals others might not pick up, listen to the expressions people use as they speak about their work and lives, and note insider anecdotes about the oddball events that nobody but a writer would put down on paper. For one view of how library research and field work combine to make it real, check out an interview I did with Gregg Sutter, Elmore Leonard's researcher. Though this guide does not cover mysteries as a genre or book trade sources, I couldn't resist adding a few links to things I find indispensable. Mystery Scene Magazine. Interviews, profiles, articles about the writing life, and enough reviews to keep you running to your favorite bookstore or library. (Full disclosure: I write for them.) Other publications devoted to mysteries include Mystery News and Mystery Readers International (which has "At Home Online," a superb series of authors interviewing authors available at their Web site. For instant gratification, use the wonderful and totally free Web database, Reviewing the Evidence. everything you ever wanted to know about mysteries Cluelass. It's all here. And then some. The Bloodstained Bookshelf, The Deadly Directory, and "just the links, ma'am" from the Mysterious Home Page. Ignorance is no defense. For European (especially British) crime fiction material, try Karen Meek's excellent Euro Crime site. For crime north of the border, check out Crime Fiction Canada and for downunder, there's the new Australasian Crime wiki. It's a user-edited site, so if you know a tidbit about crime fiction in Australia or New Zealand, throw it on the barbie. 4_Mystery_Addicts. This list is not only for readers addicted to the genre, it's addictive itself. A warm and welcoming international community of readers who are, let's face it, a bit obsessed. One interesting feature is the twice-monthly group discussion of books chosen by the members. Another regular feature is "serial readers" who discuss several books in a series. Join in! You'll never run out of things to read - or messages to keep your inbox humming. Crimespace. A social networking site for readers and writers of crime fiction. Like MySpace, only better. Daniel Hatadi, the Aussie proprietor, calls it "a place for readers and writers of crime fiction to schmooze, booze and draw up plans for the heist to end all heists" - but though the bar is a busy place, Daniel makes sure spam is not on the menu. DorothyL. Sign up for this long-running e-mail discussion list and have a regular chat with well over two thousand mystery fans worldwide. Just be sure you read the instructions first. You WILL behave. And you will have fun. Unless, of course you break the rules, conveniently located on the Web page for handy reference. One of the neat features of this list is that there are searchable archives so if your plot has taken a turn for which must find those instructions for a potato gun that you vaguely remember reading in a digest a few weeks ago, you can do it in a flash. You will also never run out of things to read, with friends saying on a daily basis, "you have to read this book." keep up with publishing and bookselling news Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind - Sarah Weinman's peerless blog about crime fiction ... and more. Publisher's Lunch. Stay au fait with Michael Cader's bouillabaisse of the latest news, gossip, and lunacy from the world of publishing, spiced with his asides. Sign up for a daily e-mail at his Web site. Though some offerings here are only available by paid subscription, a light Lunch is on Michael. Waterboro (Maine) Public Library Weblog. New York may be the City that Never Sleeps, but Waterboro has the Blogger Who Never Sleeps. Molly Williams, Ace Volunteer, updates this site many times a day with a mélange of information hot off the Web about books, publishing, mysteries, libraries, Maine, and lots, lots more. A native of Madison, Wisconsin, I've lived in Kentucky, Texas, Maine, and overseas, but now have settled in rural Minnesota, where I work as a college librarian. My main focus has been teaching students how to do research. I've consulted on the research sections of a number of writing handbooks published by Bedford/St. Martin's, including Research and Documentation Online, and have published articles on libraries and the book trade in Reference and User Services Quarterly, portal: Libraries and the Academy, American Libraries, SIMILE, Clues: A Journal of Detection and other publications. I also write mysteries. My most recent book, In the Wind, was published by St. Martin's in 2008. |
