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1.1 Researching biography: who is douglas sladen?  (Page 2/8)

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For our purposes here we will do a basic title search on WorldCat, just to pick up the necessary information to identify our author. Ifyou would like a brief tutorial on how to access and use WorldCat, you may visit our WorldCat module .

From the Basic Search page on WorldCat, enter our title, "Oriental Cairo", into the text box marked Title, as you see below. Then selectSearch.

Scroll down through the selections and you will find what looks like our book and our author.

Select the title link in blue, scroll down a bit and you will find Douglas Sladen's full name, birth and death dates.

Now we can successfully avoid any confusion with multiple Douglas Sladen's in our search for information about him.

Looking for biographical information in the stacks at fondren

Now that we are able to identify one Douglas Sladen from another we canbegin to locate more extensive biographical information in the form of a biography or autobiography. For this we will return to the WebCat home page andsearch for Douglas Sladen again, only this time we will search everything even remotely related to that name by using the Search Everything option.
This list will be, no doubt, longer than any of the more specific search options. But you never know where you may find valuable information onyour target subject and this gives you everything. It also lets you know quickly if you should move on to the next stage or continue looking on the shelves atFondren.

Our list includes several works authored by Sladen, a few others edited and some which he is listed as having arranged. Fondren lists no actualbiographies; however, we do have a valuable entry at the bottom of the list under the title "Who's Who."

Who's who

Who's Who is an annual Biographical Dictionary published in London since 1849. Each volume also presents a wealth of information pertaining to theUnited Kingdom in the particular year in which it was published. The biographies are indexed and list the subject's genealogy, relevant achievements, publishedworks and even noted recreations. As we can see by selecting the view option, Douglas Sladen can be found in Who's Who 1900, which Fondren has a copy of inthe reference section.We find Sladen, Douglas listed alphabetically by last name on page 921.
Douglas Sladen in Who's Who 1900, p. 921
As you can see we have everything from his home address to his hobbies as of 1900. Significant details include: "author and reviewer; b. London, 5 Feb.1856.... 1st in History at Oxford, and was first to hold the chair of History in University of Sydney, N.S.W.; has travelled extensively in Japan, China,Australia, Canada, the United States, and Southern Europe." We also note that he has written many books, including A Japanese Marriage , Brittany for Britons , and In Cornwall and Across the Sea . To find out more, let's move on to the next resource.

Looking for biographical information at other libraries

Looking for books available at other libraries that we return to the WorldCat homepage. We will perform a Basic Search for the words"sladen douglas biography," making sure to enter the text in the keyword text box. For further advice on how to word your requests for the bestresults in the future, click on the black question mark to the right of the Keyword text box.
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Source:  OpenStax, Conducting historical research: the case of "oriental cairo". OpenStax CNX. Oct 23, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10291/1.4
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