Online Catalogs

Online library catalogs can be very useful sources of information even when the books they list are far away, and sometimes even if there's little or nothing (suggesting that the subject in question is too new to have inspired book-length treatment). If I do a search for prion* in ANNIE I find only one item, and it's brand new:

      TITLE        Prions, prions, prions.
      PUBLISHER    Berlin : Springer, c1996.
      DESCRIPT     163 p. : ill.
      SERIES       Current topics in microbiology and immunology, 
                   0070-217X ; v. 207.

      1 > Science Library        QR502 .P75 1996

But if I ask Harvard I get a more glorious result, and I can use what I get to extend what I know by adding vocabulary (search terms, subject headings) and getting a sense for what kinds of work have been done (and when):

HU INDEX: LIST OF ITEMS RETRIEVED         40 items retrieved by your search:
FIND KW PRION
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRION DISEASES MOLECULAR BIOLOGY THERAPY AND GENOMIC CONTROVERSY
   1 gordin michael dan/ 1996  bks

PRIONS PRIONS PRIONS
   2 prusiner stanley b 1942/ 1996  bks

NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES
   3 jolles g georges/ 1994  bks

LONDON SCIENCE MUSEUMS LIBRARIES AND PLACES OF SCIENTIFIC TECHNOLOGICAL 
MEDICAL INTEREST
   4 rosen dennis 1928/ 1994  bks

FATAL FAMILIAL INSOMNIA INHERITED PRION DISEASES SLEEP AND THE THALAMUS
   5 guilleminault christian/ 1994  bks
(etc.)

Even if I know very little about prions, examining the records for books available at Harvard can tell me a lot in a very short time. It does turn out that all 40 items are not about 'prions' --Prion is a surname, among other things.