Basketball in the library

The JCU Townsville Fire are playing in the semi-finals this weekend (Sunday, February 22, 2pm - at the Townsville RSL Stadium).

To celebrate the upcoming WNBL finals games, we thought we'd pull out a "classic" book from our collection:

How to Improve Your Basketball For Girls, published by the Athletic Institute in consultation with Mildred J. Barnes.

We're not entirely sure when this book was published.  Definitely some time in the 1960s.  Some sites estimate it was in 1969, but that information isn't written anywhere on the book itself.

It's part of a series of books put out by the Athletic Institute in the 1960s, designed to teach basic skills by matching pictures (black-and-white, of course) with simple instructions.

We actually have a few of these books by the Athletic Institute, and a few other companies which published similar books in the 1960s and 1970s.  As well as being interesting books about the sports in their own right, they are also a fascinating look at the history of sport.

The books written specifically for "girls" or "women" are a great resource for anyone studying the history of women in sport.  This book, for example, was produced during a time when women's basketball was a lot more closely related to netball, and many of the pictures and skills reflect this.

This book also represents an interesting challenge if you wanted to cite it for an assignment.  It doesn't have an author or a publication year written anywhere on the book itself.  The person who is mostly likely the author is listed as a "consultant", and you can only find a date if you go searching on the Internet.  So how would you cite it?

Well, if we took APA as our citation style, I'd go with something like this:

Barnes, M. J. (Consultant). (ca. 1969). How to improve your basketball for girls. Chicago, IL: The Athletic Institute.

I took the person I believed was most likely responsible for the text and used them as the author (I could have chosen the publishers, and used them as a corporate author), then I used "ca." to show that the year is an estimation based on information not included in the book.  If I didn't have any other sources to tell me what the year was, I could have used "n.d." to say there was no date.

Oh, and if you were interested in finding more books on basketball, head over to 796.323 in the library, or have a look at these results on One Search.

Let's hope the Fire does well this weekend - even if they haven't read this book.

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