About Ben's Almanac
What is it?
Ben's Almanac is an index to the SJVIS vertical file and other miscellaneous sources of information that were gathered in response to questions submitted to SJVIS. The index was originally developed by Keith Boettcher in 1984. Since then various people have been involved in entering records. The most recent indexer of Ben's Almanac was Bill Young.
How to search it:
Searching: There are two options for keyword searching. You can search for keywords in the subject heading field or in the record abstract. Enter your keywords separated by spaces. Ben's will return a list of topics that contained your keywords anywhere in either a subject heading or the record abstract, depending on the type of search you selected.
Browsing: Ben's Almanac can be browsed by subject headings in two ways. First, from the home page, a listing of subject headings can be viewed by selecting a letter from the list near the bottom of the page. By selecting a subject heading from the list for that letter, Ben's will return a list of topics that have that subject heading. The second way to browse Ben's is select from the subject headings listed for a particular record. This will return a list of topics in the same way.
What to do if you find something that you want to see:
The intended users of Ben's Almanac are SJVLS member libraries and other California Library System Reference Centers. Requests will be accepted from other libraries. We will not accept requests from the public. If someone not affiliated with a library would like to request information found in our files, they would have to do so through their local library. Requests can be sent by e-mail or phone.
What are Ben's Files?
Ben's files are a series of individual study guides covering an eclectic range of subjects. The material in these guides was gleaned from the backfiles of the San Joaquin Valley Information Service.
e-mail: sjvis**sjvls.org (replace ** with @ to send email)