1.1 Categorizing historical documents: what is a red book?  (Page 2/5)

The Oxford English Dictionary is not only a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciationof over half a million English words, both present and past, it is the definitive reference source for the meaning and pronunciation of any word in the English language.It traces the usage of words through quotations from a wide range of international English language sources. For example, "Red Book" is defined as "a book bound in red" interms of today's usage. However, its usage has varied from a collection of all the "composicions" of the "chauntry preestis" in 1479 to "a Witche's red Book, a Catalogueof such as have sealed to the Devil with their own bloud, la rouge liste" by 1688. By the time of the publication of "The Egyptian Red Book," in the late nineteenth century,the term seems to have referred to a book containing the names of all persons holdingoffice under the State or receiving pensions from it.

As we shall see, "The Egyptian Red Book" addresses the work of government officials. It also condemns those actions, holding the officials responsible for thedeath of a General in the British army. We can see the possibility that the term has held onto some of its previous meanings: the condemnatory list of individuals that haveexchanged their free will for power, an account of the works of particular authorities, and a list of individuals in the service of the State, in this case those involved withBritish policy toward Egypt. As we continue with our investigation of this work, other explanations for the title will present themselves, all of which must be considered inour research.

Categorizing the work you are researching

Nearly every work shelved in every library around the world is categorized in relation to other works in terms of its content. This is doneaccording to a system of subject headings established by the Library of Congress that describe the content of the work, such as Athletics or History. Subheadings then further specialize the relationof the work to others, such as Swimming or Britain, 1800-1900. By locating our work within this system of categorization, we not only discover what sort of work it isconsidered to be, we also gain access to other titles that are similar to it. This can be of great advantage in any research project.

Worldcat

You can either use WorldCat.org, which can be accessed at (External Link) , or the full version of WorldCat, which is available to subscribers, such as your university library. WorldCat.org isfree, but provides fewer features than the full version of WorldCat. Please note that in order for the link to the full version to work, your institution musthave a subscription and you must either be on campus or be connected via a VPN or proxy server. Different libraries organize their materials differently, of course.If you were to look for the link to WorldCat from the Fondren home page, you would click on "Catalog," then select "Other Library Catalogs" and look for"WorldCat."