INTG 203: Food / Professor S. Cordery (Spring 2007)

Below you will find several different types of sources to help you locate more information about a particular aspect of food, relating to consumption, production, or distribution. Since you need a variety of sources to complete your paper, try taking a look at them all and then evaluate them to see which is most helpful for your research relating to food. You need to decide when you have enough information to move on to the next stage of your research.

Beginning your Research

Once you have decided on an aspect of food to research, take a minute to stop and brainstorm for information about the product, custom, or manufacturing process. For example: What are the stages of development for the product? Who makes it? How? Where is it consumed? Why? What are the products uses? Brainstorming a list of research points will help you identify areas you need to complete during the research process and help you make sure that all dimensions of the food aspect are covered in your essay.

Call numbers

Browsing the shelves is a simple, powerful method for finding materials on your topic. You can quickly evaluate the scope of a book by checking its table of contents, index and bibliography.

Looking for information relating to a particular company or range of products might also be useful to you. For example, if you were researching the cultural context of a food in a foreign country, you might want to take a look at information about the country, its customs, and perhaps some sociological information.

To see a brief outline of the entire Library of Congress classification system, click here. The sections below have been highlighted for you.

HF	Commerce
HF5001-6182	Business
HF5410-5417.5	Marketing. Distribution of products.
HF5419-5422	Wholesale Trade.
HF5428-5429.6	Retail Trade.
GT	Manners & Customs
GT1-7070	Manners & Customs (General)
GT2400-3390.5	Customs relating to private life, including eating and drinking
GT3400-5090	Customs relative to public & social life, including festivals, holidays, and ceremonies
TX	Home Economics
TX341-641	Nutrition. Foods and supply.
TX642-840	Cookery
TX851-885	Dining-room Service
TX901-946.5	Hospitality Industry. Food Service.
TX950-953	Taverns, barrooms, and saloons

Remember that these call numbers are in effect throughout the Library: whether you are looking for a book to check out, an encyclopedia to leaf through, or a video to watch.

Reference resources in Hewes Library

Take advantage of the dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials that are designed to explain a topic from the foundation up. You will find the resources below, among others, in the Reference Collection on the Main Level.

• Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life   REF GN 3333.W67 1998
• Encyclopedia of Food and Culture   REF GT 2850.E53 2003
• Statistical Handbook on Poverty in the Developing World   REF HC 59.72.P6 S73 1999
• International Directory of Company Histories   REF HD 2721.I63 1988
• Encyclopedia of American Business  REF HF 1001.E463 2004
• US Market Trends and Forecast  REF HF 5415.1.U8 1999
• Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands  REF HF 5415.3.E527 1994
• Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns   REF HF 5837.E53 2000
• Handbook of Food and Nutrition   REF QP 141.H345 2002
• Oxford Companion to Food   REF TX 349.D38 1999
• Dictionary of Cuisine   REF TX 349.D883
• Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America   REF TX 349.E45 2004
• Food Safety: A Reference Handbook   REF TX 531.R44 2000

Online resources

Listed below are several online databases that you may use to locate biographical information about your topics. Many of these databases specialize in business, history, or news resources. Some, like Academic Search Premier, are good general databases that cover a wide variety of topics.

• Academic Search Premier
  EBSCOhost's academic-specific database indexes 8,000+ periodicals in all disciplines. 4,600 titles are full-text or full-image, and 3,500 are peer-reviewed. Coverage: generally since 1980, but back to 1965 for some titles.
• America: History and Life
  Indexes and abstracts 450,000+ articles from 2,000+ international journals, focusing on the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Coverage: since 1964, with 16,000 entries added annually. Title list available in-product.
• America's Newspapers
  Full-text articles from the electronic editions of over 600 American newspapers, including Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
• Business and Industry
  Contains important information about companies, industries, products, and markets. Includes trade magazines, newsletters, general business press and international business dailies. Coverage: since 1994. Updated daily.
• Business Source Elite
  EBSCOhost's business database indexes 3,800+ periodicals in all business- and management-related disciplines. 3,000+ titles are full-text or full-image, 1,000 of which are peer-reviewed. Coverage: back to 1950 for some titles.
• Chicago Tribune 1849-1984
  Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the Chicago Tribune, from its first issue as the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1849, through 1984.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
  The online version of Britannica's latest encyclopedia (our most recent print issue is in the Ready Reference Collection at RDY REF AE 5. E363 2002), plus thousands of unique online articles, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.), the Britannica Book of the Year, and links to WWW sites. Updated daily.
• JSTOR
  Indexes and provides access to full-image (.PDF) articles from over 600 journals in all disciplines. Some holdings extend back into the nineteenth century.
• LexisNexis Academic
  Indexes, abstracts and provides some full-text access to 5,600+ news sources both national and international.
• New York Times 1851-2001
  Provides article images (.PDFs) of nearly every page and article of the New York Times, from its first issue as the New York Daily Times in 1851, through 2001: 3.4 million pages in all.
• Oxford Reference Online
  Online versions of 100+ Oxford reference works: 1.5 million entries equivalent to 60,000 print pages.

Using the WWW

There is no shortage of websites out there about your products. Companies, marketing agencies, and advertisers are all available to you. As with any topic, you need to evaluate the information that you find on these websites. For some assistance in this endeavor, check out our website evaluation guidelines.

When evaluating a website's reliability, the big question is, "Who made this website? Who is responsible?" The answer to this question tells you a lot about the information you will find there. Be wary of opinions, points of view, and biases in the material available.

Human resources: your local librarians

Hopefully, the ideas and resources above will help you to get started in your research. If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to contact a librarian at the Reference Desk, (309) 457-2301.