News Library Toolbox: Your Reference Collection
Tuesday, June 8, 1999
SLA Conference
Minneapolis, MN
Sports Reference Resources
by James Meier, The Sporting News
ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE
- Information Please Sports Almanac / edited by John Hassan. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999. Better than SI’s almanac. Online at http://infoplease.com/sports/
TOP TEN FOR MAJOR SPORTS
- Total Hockey : the official encyclopedia of the National Hockey League / ed. by Dan Diamond. New York, NY: Total Sports, 1998.
- Total Baseball
. John Thorn and Pete Palmer. New York, NY : Warner Books, 1997.
- Total football : the official encyclopedia of the National Football League
/ ed. Bob Carroll. New York : HarperCollins Publishers, c1997.
- The Official NBA basketball encyclopedia
/ edited by Alex Sachare. New York : Villard Books, 1994.
- Official Major League Baseball Fact Book
. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. Mixture of info. from the Guide & Record Books.
- National Football League Record and Fact Book
. New York: NFL, 1999. The most detailed record book for football.
- National Hockey League Official Guide and Record Book
. New York: NHL, 1999. The most detailed record book for hockey.
- The official NCAA men's college basketball records book
. Overland Park, Kan. : National Collegiate Athletic Association, 1999.
- The official NCAA college football records book
. Overland Park, Kan. : NCAA, 1999. Covers all divisions.
- The complete book of the Olympics
/ David Wallechinsky. Boston : Little, Brown, 1996.
A HALF DOZEN TO MEET YOUR LOCAL NEEDS
- Team and tour media guides: Get NBA & NHL from league offices; the rest from teams or tour associations (ATP, WTA, PGA, LPGA, PBA) themselves. For minors/college, get local teams first, then all opponents, then rest of league. For major league teams, you’ll need all teams in the league. Great for biographical information.
- The Sporting News Guides and Registers
. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. Guides have stats from previous season and current season rosters and schedules. Registers have year-by-year stats on all current players. Separate books for four major sports leagues.
- Complete Baseball Record Book
. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1999. The most detailed record book for baseball.
- The official NCAA Final Four records book
. Overland Park, Kan. : NCAA, 1999. Covers only the mens’ NCAA Div. I tournament.
- National High School Sports Record Book
. Kansas City, MO : National Federation of State High School Associations, 1998. See also their website at www.nfhs.org for a directory of all state high school athletic associations.
- State high school coaches directories
. Cassville, MO: Clell Wade Coaches Directories. Lists all jr., middle and sr. HS in your state.
OTHER SINGLE SPORT ENCYCLOPEDIAS
- Bud Collins' modern encyclopedia of tennis / edited by Bud Collins and Zander Hollander. Detroit : Visible Ink Press, c1997.
- The stock car racing encyclopedia
/ edited by Peter Golenbock and Greg Fielden. New York : Macmillan USA, c1997.
- The world encyclopedia of soccer
/ Michael LaBlanc & Richard Henshaw. Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994. If you only cover the World Cup, just get an encyclopedia for that event (Ency. of World Cup Soccer / Orlando Duarte. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994).
- The A-Z of world boxing : an authoritative and entertaining compendium of the fight game from its origins to the present day
/ Bert Blewett ; with a foreword by Reg Gutteridge. London, England : Robson Books, 1996.
- The baseball encyclopedia
. Tenth ed. New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1996.
- The pro football encyclopedia : the complete and definitive record of professional football
/ edited by Tod Maher and Bob Gill. New York, NY : Macmillan, c1997.
- The Hockey News Hockey Almanac
/ ed. by Zander Hollander. Detroit, MI : Visible Ink Press, 1999.
- Inside sports magazine college basketball
/ Mike Douchant ; foreword by Billy Packer. Detroit : Visible Ink Press, c1998.
SPECIALITY BOOKS
- The new Dickson baseball dictionary / Paul Dickson. San Diego, CA : Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999.
- Super Register
/ ed. by Allan Simpson and Jim Keller. Durham, NC : Baseball America, 1998. Stats for all current baseball players in majors & minors.
- The Ballplayers : baseball's ultimate biographical reference
/ edited by Mike Shatzkin New York : Arbor House/William Morrow, c1990.
- SABR presents the home run encyclopedia : the who, what, and where of every home run hit since 1876
/ edited by Bob McConnell and David Vincent, SABR. New York, NY : Macmillan, 1996. Every home run from 1876-1995.
- The Sport Americana baseball address list
/ by R. J. "Jack" Smalling. Cleveland, OH : Edgewater Book Company. Lists recent addresses or death dates and locations for major league baseball players.
- The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball : the official record of minor league baseball
/ edited by Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff. Durham, NC : Baseball America, 1994.
- The biographical encyclopedia of the Negro baseball leagues
/ James A. Riley . New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994.
- Baseball by the numbers : a guide to the uniform numbers of major league teams
/ by Mark Stang and Linda Harkness. Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1997. Has uniform numbers for every team through 1992.
- The encyclopedia of the NCAA Basketball Tournament : the complete independent guide to college basketball's championship event
/ Jim Savage. New York, N.Y. : Dell Pub., 1990. Has box scores for every tournament game through the 1990 Final Four.
- Chase's calendar of sports events
/ Steve Gietschier. Chicago, Ill. : Contemporary Books, 1999. Identify specific dates for historical sports events.
- Biographical dictionary of American sports
/ edited by David L. Porter. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 1995. Series of books for baseball, football, other sports.
- Professional sports team histories
/ Michael L. LaBlanc, editor ; Mary K. Ruby, associate editor. Detroit : Gale Research, c1994. Four volume set covering MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL through 1994.
- Encyclopedia of world sport : from ancient times to the present
/ David Levinson and Karen Christensen, editors. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, c1996.
- Rules of the game : the complete illustrated encyclopedia of rules for all the sports of the world
/ by the Diagram Group. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1995.
- Official Rules
. NFL and NHL publish their own. NBA and MLB published by The Sporting News.
- Sports Market Place
. Phoenix, AZ : Franklin Quest Sports, 1998. Huge directory of franchises, marketers and manufacturers.
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
- The Sports Hot Sheet - http://members.xoom.com/hotsheet/sports.html Created by Jack Styzczynski of NBC. Lists almost all the official league and team sites. Also, links to media sites.
- SportsPages - http://www.sportspages.com Links to many sports sections of daily papers and other sports media sites.
- Yahoo! Sports - http://dir.yahoo.com/recreation/sports.index.html Better for finding sites for sports outside the mainstream.
- Sportquest - http://www.sportquest.com/index.html Created by Sport Information Resource Centre of Canada. Very well indexed and does good job for international sites.
- STATS Inc. on AOL. The best organized, most detailed, and most accurate place for current stats for the Big 6 sports.
VALUABLE BUT EXPENSIVE PERIODICALS
- Sports Collectors Digest, 700 E. State St., Iola, WI 54990, 715-445-2214. weekly. $60.00 per year.
- Team Marketing Report
, 660 W. Grand Ave, Suite 100E, Chicago, IL 60610. 312-829-7060. monthly. $179 per year.
- Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal
, 120 Morehead St., Suite 310, Charlotte, NC 28202. 704-973-1400. weekly. $199 per year.
- Also check out Fortune magazine for their annual ranking of sports franchise values.
Suggestions for News Libraries
- PORTFOLIO ONE (For small library without a major league team or Div. I-A school): ie. Bismark, ND
- IPSA
- local team/tour media guides - need the tour guides only if you’re hosting an event
- high school books
- TSN Baseball Guide - summary of previous year’s seasons in every major and minor league
- PORTFOLIO TWO (For mid-city library with minor league teams and Div. I-A) ie. Columbus, OH
- IPSA, media guides, HS books, TSN Guides in your sports, NCAA books
- PORTFOLIO THREE (For big city library with major & minor league teams and Div. I-A) ie. St. Louis, MO
- IPSA, media guides, HS books, TSN Guides/Registers, NCAA books, Total Sports ency., League record books
SPORTS REFERENCE - PRESENTED BY JAMES MEIER, LIBRARIAN, THE SPORTING NEWS
PHONE: 314-993-7777
EMAIL: jmeier@sportingnews.com or tsnjrm@aol.com