Library for the Curious Starts With Dictionary, Almanac

It’s 4 a.m. and you’re lying awake, saucer-eyed and jittery because your mind refuses to shut down for the night and you’ve got to, got to, got to find out what slag is.

It’s killing you. You shut your eyes and see a slag heap, but each time it appears it’s made out of something different. Dirt, charcoal briquettes, old tires.

“So what’s it a heap of? “ you mutter, staring at the alarm clock and realizing that there is no one you know, anywhere, at 4 a.m. who can tell you what slag is.

At a time like that, a good home reference library is worth at least a good night’s sleep. And $75 or so doesn’t seem such a high price to pay for a copy of the “Materials Handbook” (McGraw-Hill), which will tell you exactly, precisely, in detail what slag is.

For writers, researchers and other people who tend to be insatiably curious about the world they live in, a good home reference library can be a kind of safe haven where you can count on finding answers.

For an outlay of money that can be either modest or stupendous, depending on your needs, it’s possible to put books on your home shelves that can tell you how to spell accommodate , what Johannes Kepler is famous for, what the GNP of Namibia was last year and, yes, even what slag is, said Laura Masoner, the senior reference librarian at the Orange County Public Library’s Garden Grove Regional Branch.

“There are a couple of things you really can’t live without,” Masoner said. “An unabridged dictionary and an almanac. With an unabridged dictionary, you can pick up so much more information than just how to spell a word. And a good dictionary will pretty much take care of (the role of) a thesaurus.”

The best unabridged dictionaries on bookstore shelves today are published by Webster’s, Random House (which emphasizes American English usage and slang) and American Heritage, Masoner said. Each is priced under $100.

Any good almanac will do, according to Masoner. They can provide esoteric knowledge that sometimes surprises first-time users, “like when Easter is going to be in the year 2000,” she noted.

However, history, biography, literature, science, the arts and many other subjects cannot be covered thoroughly in just two books.

“Then, of course, you need a good, basic encyclopedia,” Masoner said.

Prices of multivolume sets can range from $500 for a basic high school-level encyclopedia, such as the World Book, to around $2,000 for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

“The Brittanica’s considered more scholarly,” Masoner said. “The others, like the World Book, are good for ready reference, and they have very good pictures and illustrations.”

Encyclopedia shopping can be confusing, but local libraries often have the answer: a reference volume entitled the “Encyclopedia Buying Guide,” which lists the scope and features of all encyclopedias on the market.

How about finding your way around? An atlas fills that bill, and there are several types and prices, depending on scope and detail.

Rand McNally’s Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide is, according to Masoner, “the Rolls-Royce of atlases. Limited to the United States, the atlas lists train lines, airports, shipping lanes and other commercial routes. It also contains information on regional buying power, local tax bases and other elements of commerce. It is priced at $215.

Masoner also recommended the London Times Atlas of the World and atlases produced by the National Geographic Society.

Not satisfied with knowing your way around the land? Atlases of the sea are available--and there even are atlases on the geography of space.

“Atlases can be kind of a big ticket,” Masoner said. “You can spend $100 easily and go up to about $800. You can get really fancy.”

A type of quasi-atlas is Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, which features basic maps and descriptions of world locations. It costs about $15.

“It’s where you would go if someone said, ‘Where the heck is Belgium?’ ” Masoner said.

One step beyond the basics is the Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the United States government and available in many large bookstores. It is, simply, a comprehensive list of statistics used by the government, from the number of snake bites reported in the country each year to the number of registered Democrats in Rhode Island.

“Anything to do with statistics, it’s there,” Masoner said.

Another extra for the basic home library is a compendium of famous quotations.

“A lot of people recommend Bartlett’s (Familiar Quotations) as a basic, but it really depends on what kinds of things you’re doing at home as to whether you’ll use it a lot,” Masoner said.

For the more specialized home librarian--or the incurably curious--several reference books are available.

Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, which sells for about $35, is a must for the bibliophile, Masoner said. It lists “about everything you want to know about literature: poets, playwrights, novelists, legends, prize winners, historical data, characters in a play, synopses. I like to give copies as Christmas presents.”

Medical matters--such as anatomy, diseases, symptoms and treatments--are covered thoroughly by the Merck Manual, published by Merck and priced at around $20. However, Masoner said, “people read it and call the library (for clarification) because it’s written in medical-ese. If you get that book, you almost need a medical dictionary.”

The best of the medical reference books is Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, priced at about $50, she said.

For the scientifically inclined, Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia is “a very, very good single volume,” Masoner said. It details almost everything having to do with scientific discoveries--literally the way the world works. Its thickness attests in part to its completeness; it is about five inches from cover to cover. A drawback: It costs nearly $200.

People in business who work at home part or full time may benefit from the Management Handbook, published by the American Management Assn., Masoner said. “It’s the one basic business reference book I would recommend people have at home. It’s a one-volume encyclopedia for people who want to know anything about business. For instance, if your boss asks you to do a marketing report and you don’t know what a marketing report is, this will tell you.” It retails for around $70.

The Materials Handbook is “another favorite I like to push,” Masoner said. “If you want to know what anything is made of, it’ll tell you. You’d be surprised at how many calls we get from people asking questions like, ‘What’s the stuff in red pepper that burns my tongue?’ If you turn to the Materials Handbook, you can find out that it’s called capsicum.”

For those who get hot under the collar not from pepper but from wrangling with government bureaucracy, Masoner recommended the United States Government Manual, available for $5 at government bookstores. It is published yearly and lists all major U.S. government offices, who are in charge and their phone numbers.

Finally, if you want to just forget the whole thing and watch a little TV, there are two paperback volumes that can help you pick out your favorite movies. The Movie Guide (Ballantine, $6.50) lists all videos currently available in retail stores and rental outlets, and critic Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies and Video Guide (Signet, $5.95) lists “every movie that’s ever been on TV,” Masoner said.

And if all of the above items aren’t enough, there is one more option for the truly dedicated information junkie: facts by computer.

Many services, such as Datatimes and CompuServe Information Service, offer access to their databases, which include such information as news services, electronic mail, Dow Jones information, full newspaper texts, stock quotes and various reference sources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias.

Required for access to these services are a personal computer and a modem to connect the computer with the databases by phone. Fees vary widely and are generally based on the number of minutes the subscriber uses to tap into the database.

“You can set up just about any kind of information you want,” Masoner said. “There are hundreds of options. I would consider something like that top-end.”

And, she said, database shoppers need look no further than--again--the local library to find out which is best for their purposes. All data services are listed in a library volume entitled Directory of Online Databases.

There is even one more step to take, for those who don’t want to pay a use fee for a database. It is now possible, she said, to encode reference books onto compact disks--the same sorts of disks currently popular in audio systems. These disks are read by a special disk drive that must be purchased separately and connected to the computer. These drives can cost as little as $850 or as much as $2,000, Masoner said.

Microsoft Corp. offers a disk called “The Bookshelf,” which includes the World Almanac, the Chicago Manual of Style, a national ZIP Code directory, the American Heritage Dictionary and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. The disk retails for $295.

The disks’ capacities are huge, she added. The 22-volume Oxford English Dictionary can be contained on one disk.

“It’s the growth market in business communication,” Masoner said.

However, she added, the best deal of all in reference works--facts for free--can be had at the local library.

“Lots of people think the library is a place you can take the kids to read a book or a quiet place to pick up the latest best seller. They don’t realize we have all this, too,” said Masoner, gesturing at the long rows of reference volumes in the Garden Grove branch of the Orange County Public Library.

And, she added, many of the volumes that are periodically replaced are sold at branch libraries at large discounts.

One final note for those who are studying to go on “Jeopardy” or who want to get to sleep tonight: Slag is the fused refuse or dross separated from a metal in the process of smelting.

You could look it up.