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21 September 2001

An Impoverished Amateur's Library

by Sheldon Greaves

I was raised among books. This may be why I live among books (those who have seen our erstwhile apartment will know that I am not speaking figuratively) and, given my past behavior, will probably die among books. I blame my mother for this. When I was young, she and my father conspired to fill our home with books on a wide range of subjects. Since our house was located in western Oregon, it rained a lot, and our television could receive exactly five channels. This was conducive to reading.

Mom was an active member of the Friends of the Salem Public Library. Every year the library held a sale of books culled from contributions and the library's collection. The books were placed on tables in the court yard of a local mall, and sold over the course of a weekend. Pricing was simple: hardbacks were a quarter, soft cover books were a dime.

Although even my budget allowed for lots of wild spending, I volunteered to help put the books out on the tables prior to the show. This gave me two crucial advantages. First, I found out where all the real gems were. Second, when I was done I was usually rewarded for my hard work by being allowed to take a dozen or so books away free. Among other treasures, I garnered textbooks on biology, physiology, astronomy, a complete set of World Book encyclopedias, several atlases, various history texts, copies of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Whitman, translations of Galileo, Copernicus, Thucydides, plus Hubble's Realm of the Nebula, and a fondly-remembered 1898 score of HMS Pinafore (my interests were pretty eclectic even then). My total expenditure for all this probably was no more than about $30.00.

Now that I am allegedly an adult one would think that I've outgrown such things. One might also think that in this profit-driven hard-nosed economy sources of cheap used books have dried up, never to return. Granted, it isn't quite as easy as it once was, but it can still be done. We amateur scientists have the burden of doing great science on a limited budget. We talk a lot about building equipment on the cheap, but very little has been said about inexpensively creating a scientist's working library.

Where to Look
These days, one of the best sources of used books is still the public library. Every library has books they receive as donations, and most libraries go through and cull their stacks for books that nobody uses or that are considered out of date or too worn out for lending purposes. They usually dispose of these books in one of two ways. One is to hold the kind of annual or semiannual sale I described above. The other is to set aside a small space or room in the library where books are always for sale, usually at quite low prices (a few bucks at most). Sometimes magazines are also available, often for free. I sometimes like to grab magazines that have good articles in them, clip the articles, file them where I can find and use them again (more on this below), and toss the rest of the magazine.

Although I obviously have fond memories of the large book sales of my boyhood, I stopped attending them later for several reasons. First, the prices are often higher than the "book sale rooms". Second, these sales tended to attract used book dealers of the nasty, grasping predatory sort who indiscriminately grab up piles of books as cheap stock to be resold later at absurd prices. Eventually, some libraries learned to identify and keep out such riff-raff, but often these sales still bear too much resemblance to a bread riot for my tastes.

I hasten to point out that despite a few bad book dealers, others of this profession are wonderful. A good relationship built up with a reputable used book dealer can yield wonderful results, especially if you are trying to locate a particular hard-to-find volume. Online book search services are also helpful, as are search firms that will keep a "wish list". One such firm in Berkeley (that has since gone out of business) kept a list of books I wanted for about five years. They found about half of them--including a set I'd been looking for off and on for over fifteen years--and did so for a reasonable price. When you deal with such search services, make sure they understand that you are not looking for copies to collect or as investments. Let them know that you'll accept books in less-than-pristine condition and you'll pay a lot less.

Occasionally you can find a build a relationship with librarians at specialized libraries where the scope of the collection is limited. For example, I had a good friend who is a librarian at a local religious seminary. He received donations of books from various sources, but often these books fell outside the purview the library. So, he finds homes for them and occasionally my spouse and I have benefited--grandly--from his generosity. And for the many books we've received from him, he's never charged us a cent, although we have gone in and helped out a few times as volunteers for the sake of fairness.

Of course, if you are a member of SAS and you don't have time for serendipity to help you, SAS has access to a wide range of science book distributors. If you can provide us with an ISBN and the name of a distributor, we can usually obtain the books you want at a discount.

Finally, there is that great cyber-library known as the World Wide Web. This involves a slightly different mindset, because if you find an article or series of pages that you really like, you should print it out right then, and write the URL on the printout if your browser doesn't do this anyway. Don't wait and go back to it later. Do it right then. If you have a tool for grabbing web pages (sometimes known as "page rippers"), grab it and save it. There are several shareware or public domain programs that can do this pretty well. Although the web contains a vast amount of information, it is surprisingly ephemeral. Data only exists on the web as long as someone is willing to pay for storing it. URLs change. Search engines lose track of pages or never acquire them in the first place. Your personal library should include a file system for nuggets you sift from the cyberstream, or clip from magazines or newspapers. More on this later.

What to Look For
Obviously, every reader has different needs. The suggestions below represent what has worked for me, so I offer them as suggestions rather than rules.

If you don't already have a good set of general references, make sure you get a decent dictionary and some kind of encyclopedia. A desk encyclopedia is a good option, too. Don't forget a copy of the World Almanac, which contains all kinds of tidbits of interest to science buffs. I it an important part of my personal library. If you do any writing (or plan on doing so), you should look for a style guide such as the MLA Manual of Style, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate Turabian, or the Chicago Manual of Style. The latter is usually very expensive to buy new and is reissued every year. Usually the changes from one year to the next are so trivial that if you can find a used copy for a few bucks, grab it. If you plan on writing you absolutely must obtain a copy of Stunk and White's classic The Elements of Style. This little gem will only set you back seven or eight dollars new, and is worth it. To round out your essential reference shelf, look for a world atlas. These are not hard to find and generally available from used bookstores for a decent price.

Now for the science stuff. Watch for a good dictionary of science and technology, especially if you are still somewhat new to science. Next, be on the lookout for some basic math books. If math is one of your strong points, you might have your old math textbooks anyway. Great. Textbooks represent a great source of information for subjects like math, because the field hasn't changed much in those areas that concern what most amateur scientists are doing.

Try to acquire good textbooks for physics and chemistry, but be wary of old biology texts. That particular field has changed so dramatically in recent years that some older biology books are less useful and may be misleading. However, an exception is any biology or zoology book that described biological techniques for collecting, preserving and studying specimens or other techniques. Field guides are worth obtaining if your work requires such information. "Handbooks" can be nice tools. Occasionally a copy of Handbook of Physics and Chemistry turns up. Even if it's an old edition, most of the information will be more than accurate enough for your needs. Sometimes these older handbooks will include information on "obsolete" techniques. For example, my copy (1962-63 edition) contains a nice section on blowpipe analysis. Engineering handbooks are also a nice find. I found a small pocket-sized hardbound engineering handbook jammed with facts and formulae that set me back fifty cents.

Also, be on the lookout for lab manuals that accompany textbooks. These are harder to find because they usually get thrown out instead of donated or sold to used book dealers. But they tend to have more information on brass-tacks lab and bench techniques than the main textbooks do. You might be able to find some through a local university campus. Take a walk to the campus bookstore between terms, or let an off-campus used book dealer know that you are looking for certain types of lab manuals. If they know they can sell one, they might buy one that's offered to them.

Another thing you may want to watch for is a book on the BASIC computer language. That may sound odd, but there are still a lot of amateurs out there who use BASIC for quick-and-dirty programming needs. There are also a lot of older projects out there (including some from "The Amateur Scientist") that include code in BASIC. To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any books on BASIC in print.

Finally, some books on fabrication and shop techniques are always a help, especially if you are doing science that requires you to build your own apparatus.

Magazines are another great resource. Many libraries will get these as donations, then give them away. To make the best use of magazines, cut out and keep only the articles that interest you. This really is the best way to handle magazines because a stack of magazines is only useful if you have some kind of index. Cutting out articles and filing them means that you can actually find and use the information you've gleaned.

Your Filing System
That pile of magazine articles, pamphlets from state parks and museums, newspaper clippings and printouts from the web is sitting there, mocking you, growing like something out of a bad horror movie. It's taking up space and basically being useless. There are two things you need to do. First, make a list of the articles you have saved. I know, I know... it's tedious but making a list forces you to look at exactly what you've saved and reconsider whether or not to keep it. If you write your list in a word processing document it becomes easy to search. If you put it in a simple flat-file database it becomes easier still.

Next, take all those articles and decide how you are going to store them. Will you group them by subject? Or will you number and file them in the order you obtained them, relying on your list to find specific items? My personal preference is to keep articles, pamphlets, etc. grouped together by subject, while keeping a list of your holdings and their location. The main advantages are that I can pull the file on a subject and browse the contents as on a library shelf. Another advantage is that when I'm done looking at a particular subject, it is easier to put things away.

As you cultivate a network of book sources and apply some savvy organization to clippings, articles and other ephemera, you can develop a useful research tool to supplement your work, and spend a lot less money doing so. And as any amateur will tell you, that's half the fun.