INFORM Workshop Training Materials
Tertiary and Reference Resources
Tertiary and Reference Resources
Sometimes the information you need is not in a ‘regular’ book or a journal article but
in some other type of resource, such as a handbook, encyclopaedia, or directory.
Librarians have more contact with these kinds of materials, but health professionals
should also be aware of them and know when to use them.
Relationship between primary, secondary, & tertiary resources
A quick reminder from earlier units:
 Primary literature consists of original work in the form of books, journal articles,
and grey literature.
 Secondary resources are catalogues (OPACs), bibliographic databases, indexes,
bibliographies, review articles, and current awareness tools that provide
bibliographic information about the primary literature, making it possible to
identify and access.
 Tertiary resources are thus those that provide bibliographic information about the
secondary resources. They include indexes of catalogues, directories of indexes,
bibliographies of bibliographies, etc.
Tertiary resources are real ‘gold nuggets’ and important tools for librarians. Among
the most important are Gale’s Directory of Databases, which provides information
about on-line indexes and databases available as CD-ROMs and in other forms, and
Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, which gives details about both academic and nonacademic serial publications around the world. Unfortunately, these tools are very
expensive.
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INFORM Workshop Training Materials
Tertiary and Reference Resources
Reference literature/resources
There is a category of literature and electronic resources that is closely related to
tertiary material but is different enough to warrant a separate label. This is the
‘reference literature’. The term is initially confusing, since the term ‘reference’ also
applies to the bibliographic information needed to identify any piece of literature.
Reference resources are where you go to look something up. It consists of specially
compiled sets of information. In everyday life, you use reference materials all the
time to find maps (atlases), telephone numbers (directories), transportation schedules
(timetables), the meaning and spelling of words (dictionaries), and condensed
information on specific topics (encyclopaedia).
Reference literature is not something that you read straight through, and it is not
something that people read for fun. (At least, not most people.)
There are numerous reference resources that are specifically aimed at academic and
professional purposes, such as books containing statistical information, directories of
academic institutions, and literature summarizing what is known about various
academic topics.
Examples include publications called yearbooks, handbooks, and surveys. These
may include facts, statistics, names and addresses of key persons, glossaries of
technical terminology, guidelines for procedures, maps, calendars for international
meetings, lists of professional organizations, and annotated bibliographies.
Among the important reference works of this sort are many published by Europa
Publications, including global and regional annual handbooks (Europa World Year
Book 2004, Africa South of the Sahara 2004, etc.), The World of Learning (a guide to
academic institutions and organizations around the world), The International
Foundation Directory 2004, and many others.
Finding tertiary and reference materials
If you are a librarian and want to purchase tertiary and reference materials, one way
to get started is to look for publishers. There are several publishing companies that
specialize in tertiary and reference materials, as well as indexes and bibliographies.
You therefore can try entering ‘Gale’, or ‘Europa’ or ‘Bowker’ in the publisher field
and see what you get. To access these publishers on-line, go to an on-line directory
of publishers such as the one at ACQWeb at acqweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/ and then
just click on the name of the publisher. Note that ACQWeb also has a special listing
of publishers specializing in reference materials.
You can get a feel for the variety of reference literature available today by visiting
some of the major reference publishers. The address for Gale is www.gale.com/, for
Europa is www.europapublications.co.uk/, and for Bowker is www.bowker.co.uk.
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INFORM Workshop Training Materials
Tertiary and Reference Resources
Today, some libraries include links to electronic reference materials on their home
pages. Some of these links are open to the public, but others are limited to the
specific academic community, that is, to teachers, researchers, and students at the
university where the library is located.
To get an idea of how this work, you can check the list of such materials at Uppsala
University Library at www.ub.uu.se/databas/eresurs/refbas/e_start.cfm. There are
currently 436 resources. You can limit the selection by subject or category. Not all
of the items listed are reference materials, but many of them are. These include the
atlases, handbooks, encyclopaedia, manuals, dictionaries, etc. Some are only open to
teachers and students at Uppsala University, but others are open to the users
elsewhere.
And finally, remember to check in journals!
Strangely enough, not all reference literature is in the form of heavy books. Some
journal articles function as reference literature because they provide an overview of a
field. These are called review articles. They often include good bibliographies, as
well as factual information. You can find review articles by searching for the topic
of interest and ‘review’. Some indexes even have a special search field for review
articles. You can find this option in the ‘limits’ part of Medline/PubMed.
Martha J Garrett
INFORM
Faculty of Medicine, Uppsala University
Uppsala, Sweden
June 2005
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