Lesson 6 NetLibrary pt.2

Lesson 6 NetLibrary pt 2

In my obsessive-compulsive curiosity, I did go back to NetLibrary trying to systematically find more cookbooks since I had seen the one entry for clay pot cooking.

I did first try “mining” the record, using “SHOW DETAILS” option, for the Clay Pot record for any subject headings or keyword clues.

Pardon my stale notes (no food pun initially intended, but I will use it anyway). Using a series of keyword search terms, here’s a sampling of my results. My secret agenda was to figure out how many international cookbooks would be found. I did eventually find six: Thai, East African, West African, Indian, Spanish, Mexican and Russian…in the Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbook series.

Cookbook: 410 results including lots of non-food related titles
Cookbooks: 6 *See note below
Cook: 4 results (all personal names, not food)
Cooking: 8 results
Recipes: 24 results
Cookery: 16 results

I’m sure there are more cookbooks in NetLibrary…I did not exhaust all the possible food words. Since I belong to an international potluck group. I look forward to using NetLibrary as a recipe resource in the future.

*I did notice something a little odd on the printed page of results for COOKBOOKS.

While the Search Results showed “6” results, the printed list had 7 titles.

Once I started looking at the printed list of results, my eyes caught phrases that seemed “odd” to be describing cookbooks of any kind.

For example, the first book on the list was Cooking the Spanish Way. Until I printed this results list, I presumed that the paragraph of information about the book was a summary of the book. Alas, but that was not the case. Instead the paragraph was essentially what appeared to be a random selection from the book. In fact, it is an excerpt from page 10 of an introductory chapter to the book. The opening words are as follows: “Cooking the SPANISH way 10 business opportunities and tourists lured by Spain’s beauty….” Yes, I DID peruse the pages until I found that quote on page 10.

The second cookbook in the list was Cooking the Russian Way. Its supposed summary reads “…workers and the middle class were unhappy about their terrible working conditions….” Yes, that information IS taken from the cookbook.

I guess my recommendation to NetLibrary users is to not rely on the information printed on the results page but rather check the actual contents of book for a better idea of the what the book is about.