Exercise 4

1. Where can you find information about Nobel Prize ? Who get the Nobel Prize this year ?

- I can search on www.nobelprize.org

- Named Charles K. Kao

Standard Telecommunication Laboratories Harlow, United Kingdom; Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China

- The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009

2. Go to Encyclopedia Online at http://library.spu.ac.th Search for the history of automobiles or computer. Summarize the information you get

- The first computers were people! That is, electronic computers (and the earlier mechanical computers) were given this name because they performed the work that had previously been assigned to people. "Computer" was originally a job title: it was used to describe those human beings (predominantly women) whose job it was to perform the repetitive calculations required to compute such things as navigational tables, tide charts, and planetary positions for astronomical almanacs. Imagine you had a job where hour after hour, day after day, you were to do nothing but compute multiplications. Boredom would quickly set in, leading to carelessness, leading to mistakes. And even on your best days you wouldn't be producing answers very fast. Therefore, inventors have been searching for hundreds of years for a way to mechanize (that is, find a mechanism that can perform) this task. In 1617 an eccentric (some say mad) Scotsman named John Napier invented logarithms, which are a technology that allows multiplication to be performed via addition. The magic ingredient is the logarithm of each operand, which was originally obtained from a printed table. But Napier also invented an alternative to tables, where the logarithm values were carved on ivory sticks which are now called Napier's Bones. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made drawings of gear-driven calculating machines but apparently never built any.

3. What is the difference between general book and reference book ?

- The distinction between a book and a reference book can be confusing. Some books that you might "reference" are still considered "books" for the purposes of citation. For example, the MLA Handbook, APA Publication Manual, and other writing style books would be treated as "books" in your bibliography.Reference books are used to find factual information on a subject, and are not usually read all the way through or chapter by chapter. In a K-12 library, reference books are usually located in a special reference collection area, and cannot be checked out. Reference books include dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, almanacs, atlases, and directories.As a side note, in APA, the reader must also distinguish between reference books and what are called "annual periodicals." For example, consider a yearbook (which looks like a reference work). Annual periodicals often resemble edited books. To tell the difference, look at the publication's subtitle. If the subtitle changes annually, it should be treated as an edited book or reference work. If there is no subtitle, or the subtitle does not change year to year, it should be treated as an annual periodical.



4. When do you need to search information from the reference collection ?

- When I want to know the information about the History Background, it related to the topics.


5. What type of reference collection that you like to use most ? And why ?

- Dictionary because I can improve my English vocabularies