Book excerpt: This brand new edition of Wolf's acclaimed work provides a self-contained, short course in essential library skills for patrons of college, high school and public libraries. The intent is to provide a quick and easy way to learn to do library research. The exercises contained herein give students hands-on experience by applying rules stated in the text to situations that approach real "research problems." Subjects addressed include a brief tour of the library; card catalogs and cataloging systems; filing rules; online public access catalogs; subject searching; bibliographies; book reviews and parts of a book; dictionaries; encyclopedias; handbooks; atlases; gazetteers; periodicals; newspapers; online database searching and reference sources; literature and criticism; e-books; government information and government documents; biographies; business, career and consumer information; non-print materials and special services; online computer use in libraries and schools; and hints for writing term papers. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.