Credo Reference Blog

Are you attending the PLA National Conference in Portland, OR next week? We’ll be there and we’d love to see you. Stop by Booth 740 and get a sneak peak at our newest tools. We’re launching exciting new ways to help you help your patrons AND to help your patrons get the most out of their library.

All the questions in this week’s brainteaser refer to a group of twelve things or people – also known as a dozen.

1. What is a “daily dozen”?

2. How many are there in a “baker’s dozen”?

3. Which hero of classical mythology was renowned for completing twelve seemingly impossible tasks, which included cleaning the Augean stables and killing the nine-headed Hydra?

4. What is the date of Twelfth Night?

5. Name the war film (1967), starring Lee Marvin and Telly Savalas, about a squad of 12 military prisoners who are challenged to perform a suicidal mission in occupied France during the Second World War.

6. Who invented the method of musical composition called the twelve-tone system or twelve-note system in about 1921?

7. Which phrase containing the word “dozen” describes a situation in which a choice must be made between alternatives that are almost or effectively the same?

8. What was the title of the book and film about the twelve children of Frank B. Gilbreth Sr. & Lillian E. Gilbreth?

9. Name nine of the twelve signs of the zodiac.

10. What is the word for a polygon having twelve angles and twelve sides?

Find the answers here.

The Credo Content Acquisition Team would like your help. We regularly evaluate our set of subject encyclopedias and subject dictionaries subject-by-subject in order to develop wish lists for sub-areas where we seek to strengthen Credo. This month we are surveying the following subjects looking for ways to strengthen the Credo General Reference collection:

• Education
• Economics
• Visual and Media Arts
• Business
• Environmental Studies

We are looking for subject librarians in each of these fields who would be willing to fill out a brief survey to help us rank the importance of various sub-areas within each of these fields.

An example of a possible question is: “In Education, what is the relative importance of having reference sources covering each of the following: home schooling, rural schools, urban schools, etc.”

Each survey should take no more that 20-30 minutes to fill out. If you are interested in helping us better understand these five subjects, please e-mail us at:  contentacquisitionATCredoReferenceDOTcom and include in the message the field or fields for which you are willing to provide input.

Of central importance to all of us at Credo Reference is assuring that we are on the right track to accomplish our core mission:  to provide a reference service that both learners and librarians find to be truly valuable.   We are continually finding additional ways to assess whether or not we are on the right path.

In this instance we’re choosing the most straightforward approach: stating what we see as the major factors influencing the worlds of learners, librarians, and reference and asking for your feedback.

Are these the most important trends?  Have we articulated them correctly?   Are there others that we’ve missed?

Any feedback is welcome.  It will help sharpen our focus on our core mission.

Trends we’re seeing:

1. Budget pressures on libraries mean an extremely focused attention on usage and the justification of content spending decisions
2. Students are overwhelmed by the amount of information available to them and as a result “Research seems to be far more difficult to conduct in the digital age than it did in previous times”.  (Page 2, Project Information Literacy Progress Report ).
3. What’s most often missing from the student’s world are effective tools and content delivered at the point of need for “pre-search”   During the pre-search phase of research, students are looking for overview, background and vocabulary information and connections to begin their research process. (Page 10, Project Information Literacy Progress Report:  “Lessons Learned”)
4. Students too often start their research with non-library resources even when library resources are the most appropriate starting points.
5. Students are unaware of the databases available to them in the library and the valuable information they contain.  And without the big-picture and vocabulary contexts they need they are often confused by what each database can do for them.
6. Librarians often struggle with the question of where to start users, as they fear the “silo-effect” will leave users stranded in one information database without seamless linking to other valuable information resources.
7. Various “big-system” solutions are offered as “discovery tools,” but many are a drink from the fire hose for the beginning student.  Even “discovery tools” need to be “discovered.”

What do you think? Have we missed anything? How would you rank these in terms of severity or importance?

This week’s brainteaser is all about quotations – the people who originated them, what they said, the people or things they described, etc.

1. What is the name for the law which states that “If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it” or “If anything can go wrong, it will”?
2. Which British poet wrote: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”? Was it Keats, Shelley or Gray?
3. What was Shakespeare referring to in “Othello” when he wrote: “It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on”?
4. Fill the gap in this quotation from a 1918 speech by David Lloyd George; “What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for…what?…to live in”.
5. Which British conductor said “The English may not like music – but they absolutely love the noise it makes”?
6. In the 1933 film “I’m No Angel”, which actress said “Beulah, peel me a grape”?
7. Complete this quotation from Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim”, about someone recovering from a hangover: “He resolved, having done it once, never to move his…what?…again”.
8. Which French author wrote “L’Enfer, c’est les Autres” (Hell is other people)?
9. Which British prime minister was Peter Cook impersonating in “Beyond the Fringe” in 1961 when he said “We exchanged many frank words in our respective languages”?
10. Which American said: “A good newspaper…is a nation talking to itself”?

Find the answers here.

Credo is a publisher-neutral provider of reference content and services to libraries of all types worldwide. While we may serve other markets in the future, libraries are the foundation of our business. Businesses in our industry often seek advantages by obtaining exclusive rights to the distribution of certain content to various library markets.

The advantages are obvious. If you have exclusive distribution rights to content then you can charge whatever you want. You have no competitive pressures or market forces that would set the price at its real value to customers. The exclusivity question is not specific to ‘for-profit’ or ‘non-profit’ library vendors. Some of the most prominent ‘non-profits’ in the world of reference publishing are some of the leading examples of businesses that employ exclusivity to their business advantage.

So why would Credo Reference make the conscious choice to eschew exclusivity in any of our content provider relationships? We are unabashedly a ‘for-profit’ company. But we are also a ‘for libraries’ company. And a ‘for employees’ company. And a ‘for learners’ company.

Our board of directors has always been very clear that building a really great company is analogous to creating a thriving ecology. An ecology is healthy if all constituents experience themselves as well-served by their participation. So if we were to seek and then depend on exclusive relationships to obtain important content, we would be creating a significant imbalance between what we’d charge for that content and its real value to customers.

Credo would rather obtain content on a non-exclusive basis. A non-exclusive relationship is basically a statement that we expect the content provider will have other approaches in their markets – and that may include library markets. We seek to provide excellent returns for our publishers—but if they can get better returns by including others in their distribution plans why shouldn’t they? By not obtaining exclusive agreements, Credo  indicates to our library customers that we’re not paying huge extra prices for the content we provide them and therefore can provide both content and functionality at a much better value.

This idea of a company being an ecology in which each constituent is served in a balanced way is not unique in the business world. But it does give us unique guidance on how we approach things like exclusivity in content relationships. We’ve also found that it resonates well with many experts in reference librarianship. We’ve heard from many reference experts about how libraries should be able to get the reference titles they need on the platform of their choice. Exclusivity agreements for content would be a direct contradiction of this vision.

The centerpiece of our company’s innovation is the platform on which we deliver reference content. We are sufficiently confident that we have done and will continue to do an excellent job on our interface that we don’t need to shore it up artificially with exclusivity arrangements. Ironically, by not seeking exclusive content relationships we may end up with publishers preferring to have their content on Credo. We’ll be glad for that vote of confidence, but it won’t be something that we seek to artificially prop up with exclusive content agreements.

John Dove

A biography is a description of someone’s life. If it is written by the person himself or herself, it is called an autobiography. See if you can answer these questions about people’s life stories.

1. James Boswell is best known for his “Life” of which person?

2. “The Greatest” was the 1975 autobiography of which world-champion boxer?

3. Virginia Woolf’s “Flush” was a biography of what sort of animal owned by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

4. Complete this verse by Edmund Clerihew Bentley:
The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps
But Biography is about…

5. Who wrote biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, as well as books called “The Inklings” and “Geniuses Together”?

6. “Brother Ray” is the autobiography of which American singer, written with David Ritz?

7. How did Lytton Strachey describe four Victorians in the title of his 1918 book of short biographies of them?

8. Who wrote the autobiographical novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” extracted from a work called “Stephen Hero”?

9. Charles Laughton starred in a 1933 film about “The Private Life” of which English king?

10. Anne Stevenson’s “Bitter Fame” is a notoriously controversial biography of which of her close contemporaries?

Find the answers here.

As promised yesterday, here are more of our eclectic personal reading pleasures of the moment…

From Anne Kail, UK Sales Director:

Why am I never reading Tolstoy or Proust or Ibsen when asked ‘what are you reading?’  Here in the Oxford office it’s our busiest time of the year, so a bit of light-hearted escapism is what’s required.

Starting Over

Dilemma: you can see I’m too much of a literary pseud to be seen curled up with chick lit (or admit it here).  Solution: chick lit written by a chap wouldn’t be chick lit, would it?

Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons to the rescue! Absolutely ripped through Nick Hornby’s “Juliet, Naked.” It’s about a handful of guys obsessed with a long-retired rock star who wants nothing to do with them.  It doesn’t have the laugh-out-loud lines that I found in “Fever Pitch” and “High Fidelity,” but every so often you want to read bits out loud to whoever is nearby.  Oh…  that’s just me, then?

Have nearly finished Tony Parsons’ “Starting Over.” It deals with cellular memory syndrome (see, hardly chick lit!). George is in his 40’s, steady job, married with two children; he has a heart attack, gets the heart of a 19 year-old, and starts behaving like a teenager and loses the lot. A real page-turner. How will it end!?

(Note to self: I will definitely read “War and Peace” sometime soon.)

From John G. Dove, Credo President:

Lemprières Dictionary

I am reading “Lemprière’s Dictionary” by Lawrence Norfolk.   It was suggested to me by the librarian of the Houses of Parliament (who is getting her PhD on the characteristics of subject encyclopedias).   This historical novel is a Dan Brown like thriller which has at its center the famous lexicographer of mythology who grew up on the island of Jersey.

Could there be a more perfect novel for me to get lost in?

From Heather Blaine, Sales Marketing Manager:

As I wrote about here, I am in the midst of reading “This Book is Overdue” by Marilyn Johnson. I’m further along and really enjoying all the different stories and examples of what leading-edge librarians are doing and have done in the past few years. The book is organized thematically by chapter and I’ve just finished the chapter on “Blogging Librarians” so now my list of blogs to follow has doubled!

The Sea of Monsters

In addition, I’ve started the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series – I’m now on book two, “The Sea of Monsters.” I really enjoyed the Harry Potter series and I LOVED studying Greek Mythology in school so when someone recommended these books to me I thought, why not? Well, I’m pretty well hooked. I think Rick Riordan has done a great job of creating a compelling story that is relatable in today’s world but which is also sneakily educational at the same time.

So, now you’ve had some insight into our reading habits at Credo Reference. What would you suggest we read next?

It should come as no surprise that an organization that blends technology, libraries, publishing and research would have an eclectic group of people with varied tastes and interests. This latest installment “What We’re Reading” is a perfect example!

From Al Stevens, CTO:

The Invention of Air

“The Invention of Air” by Steven Johnson, a fascinating account of the life of the English scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley. His religious and political views forced him to flee England and then nearly landed him in prison in the US.  Besides discovering oxygen, he helped found Unitarianism, invented soda water and influenced the thinking of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

From Lisa Hill, Senior Library Relations Specialist:
I’ve recently become immersed in the Karla-Smiley espionage trilogy from author John Le Carre.  Begun in 1974 the series takes place during the heart of the Cold War and pits British Intelligence chief George Smiley against his Russian counterpart known as Karla.  I’ve just finished “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” which dealt with the hunt for a Russian mole within British intelligence.  I’m now nearing the finish of “The Honourable Schoolboy” which has George Smiley and his men following Karla’s tracks in Southeast Asia.  “Smiley’s People” ends the trilogy, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

I’m enjoying the series because it doesn’t follow the standard ‘espionage novel’ template and doesn’t read like a Hollywood movie.  Le Carre takes time to develop the characters, flaws and all, so that the reader receives a fully fleshed glimpse of the spy trade.  I’ve missed my train stop on more than one occasion.  Read “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and you too can be late for work!

From Nancy King, Product Manager:

Pedaling Revolution

I’m reading “Pedaling Revolution” by Jeff Mapes.

Why am I reading it? Well, I’m desperately hoping for an early spring so that I can get back on my bike and off the subway. It’s an interesting read about bike-friendly cities and how they’re creating a place for cyclists on city streets. If only Boston were more like Amsterdam or even Portland, Oregon… Next up is another transportation-related book – “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)”
But, wait, there’s more…our next installment will include dictionaries, heart transplants, librarians and Greek gods!

Do your receive the “Credo Reference Content Update” – a monthly email about what is new and updated in Credo Reference? If you do, you know that Credo has recently added more than 2,000 images from The National Gallery, London. (If you don’t get our Content Update, you can sign up here.)

To celebrate, here’s a brainteaser about the National Gallery and some of its pictures.

The Hay Wain

1. In 1821, who painted “The Hay Wain”, which is in the National Gallery.

2. The National Gallery has a painting called “Sunflowers” – one of several of this subject produced in 1888 by which artist?

3. In which London square is the National Gallery?

4. Who famously painted water-lilies at his garden at Giverny?

5. When an extension was proposed to the National Gallery, Charles, Prince of Wales, described it as putting “on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend” a monstrous…what?

6. What kind of animal was “Whistlejacket”, painted by Stubbs in about 1762?

7. “Marriage A-la-Mode” was a series of satirical engravings about the upper echelons of society made by which artist?

8. Was the picture called “Les Grandes Baigneuses” painted by Manet, Cezanne or Seurat?

9. Which ship, tugged to her last berth in 1838 and painted by J. M. W. Turner, was the subject of the picture voted “The Greatest Painting in Britain”?

10. An 18th-century portrait of “Mr and Mrs Andrews” is the masterpiece of which artist’s early years?

Find the answers here.