Old books

There have been a few threads on various lists recently about trying to find old copies of some texts which is a little like the proverbial search for hens teeth.

As one that has spent ages and ages in libraries for literature searches for MSc and PhD I know a little how to use the system for old out of print texts.

Recently I was searching for a copy of Terman's Radio Engineering from
1947 (http://lccn.loc.gov/47012028) and this was how I found it....

I knew it was published in the US.

A recent search has been for Doug DeMaw's

"W1FB's Design Notebook"

The book details are:
# Paperback: 195 pages
# Publisher: American Radio Relay League; 1st edition (June 1990)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0872593207

Armed with this you can find it in the US library of Congress catalog:
http://catalog.loc.gov/
Will give you:
LCCN Permalink: http://lccn.loc.gov/91132921

Look at the permalink info and you will find:
LC Classification: TK9956 .D4517 1990
Dewey Class No.: 621.384/12 20
With these that should mean you might ask/find it in a local big town
library maybe your local library can order a copy for you to
read/study, as they will understand the Dewey bit?

As it has an ISBN and was publishing in US recently that means there
should be copies in US copyright and some non-copyright libraries. I
wrote something in 1990 with a US publisher and I know it is there
http://lccn.loc.gov/99043503.

If it was a UK published book you can do a similar search in the British library.
http://www.bl.uk/

If the book was published elsewhere maybe start here to figure out where to start looking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit

OK a tad geeky but I spent months in libraries doing literature search for university research so you learn how the system works.

As this is for radio I think we all know QST is like RSGB RadCom in this sense at
least, much of the technical article content from the authors also
appears in the annual handbooks and other published books it would
probably be safe to assume that much of the W1FB's writings would have
been published in articles in QST, ARRL handbooks and other places
over the years. Just like ARRL does with other writers e.g. KK7B
articles on R2 and T2 appear in QST and several ARRL books.

If you're an ARRL member you can search for articles by DeMaw at
http://www.arrl.org/members-only/qqnsearch.html There are 600+ and
some (50+) that can be downloaded as PDFs. The rest you could get off
QST CD Rom collections.

Maybe a nice man from ARRL might make a pdf of the ARRL back catalogue available for members as a download as it doesn't look like they are reprinting much of it.