Daunting challenges of teaching an introductory comparative politics course make it almost fanciful to urge over-burdened colleagues to take on one more task: to introduce undergraduates to standard reference sources in college and university libraries. And yet the task, I submit, needs to be done.

Like many others, I long took for granted that students would know or soon discover the treasures hidden in library reference sections. I assumed, for example, that students would know where to look for bibliographical sources for term papers. I reacted with scholarly indignation when they locked in orbit around Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. I had trouble understanding why other students contended that topics involving recent political events could not be researched, because no books had yet been written on them. I was baffled by the frequent inability of students to obtain biographical information on major foreign leaders, to check the names of party candidates, to find election results, or to learn the composition of cabinets or politburos (admittedly a dicier problem these days).

One solution was to prevail upon the excellent reference librarian at our college to brief introductory students on the holdings of the college library. As informative as these briefings were, I came to fear that even the most receptive students were in a passive mode, lacked a sense of immediate relevance, and would soon forget what they were hearing unless they were asked to put it to early use.