Bibliography as an interdisciplinary information service - Navigating Among the Disciplines: The Library and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

The host instructors developed print materials to support the course (a two-volume anthology of literature and non-fiction served as a text-book, and a "playbook" provided guidance to the key concepts of the programs through exercises, guides to study, and suggested readings). We further supplemented the course with a dynamic (that is, evolving) bibliography of scholarly and popular materials.

The original play and leisure bibliography, which fit the characteristics of what Wilson calls pragmatic bibliography, began with two core works, Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Another useful source was David Sleet's (1971) thesis Interdisciplinary Research Index on Play: A Guide to the Literature, a list of resources organized by disciplinary field. The bibliography developed as the instructors and colleagues recommended readings to one another, followed bibliographic trails, stumbled across books and articles, and even made unlikely materials relevant to the topic. The scope of the bibliography included works from all fields about, or alluding to, the role of play and leisure in culture. The bibliographic items comprised a variety of materials, including unpublished manuscripts, published articles, books, and book chapters; popular press materials; newspaper articles, and video materials. They encompassed a wide range of genres. fiction, social and political commentary; expository essays; and studies based in one or another of the social sciences and humanities. Some works were not necessarily about play or leisure but were themselves playful or exemplary of one or another concept which helped to describe or define play and leisure; still others were seemingly unrelated, but were made relevant by a participant.

In a second phase of compiling the bibliography, this author continued to develop it into a set of materials for individual and more focused, primarily academic, use - i.e., presentations at scholarly meetings, potential publications, and other projects. The search for items also became much more focused and related to specific topics of interest, for instance, play and creativity, and used tools such as the Institute of Scientific Information's (ISI) Current Contents.

Structured Bibliography

Would a systematic approach to building a bibliography be more productive than an unstructured approach? One role of academic libraries is to provide collections which support the curriculum and research of faculty, students, and staff, and to facilitate physical access to materials they do not hold. A continuing question is whether libraries or any other information systems do an adequate job of helping scholars identify materials that they need for. their work (Searing, 1992; Hubbard, 1992). Some librarians suggest that faculty miss great opportunities to improve their own work (either in quality or efficiency) when they do not take advantage of the systems that libraries provide. When asked, however, many scholars reply that they find needed information very well without using libraries, systems except sporadically, or they say that the systems are inadequate for what they really need (Perrow, 1989). The use and utility of these systems can vary among disciplines, research focus, and length in career (Wiberley & Jones, 1989, 1994).