Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

The work of compiling this bibliography began with WorldCat, that remarkable online resource maintained by the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC). Using WorldCat’s "Advanced Search" feature, I originally searched for non-juvenile, non-fiction print books written in English and matching the keyword "football."
I was a bit stunned when I saw the results: 39,554 hits. But, as I skimmed through the titles, I saw that there were many false positives: Books about soccer, Rugby, and Australian football, for example. Focusing on American football (which had to be done title by title) would eliminate at least 70 percent of the titles.
It also became obvious that some works of fiction and books for juveniles had somehow dripped through the filters. Furthermore, I figured that by eliminating the ephemeral (e.g., game programs) and peripheral (e.g., cookbooks), I could bring the number of titles down to a fairly manageable 10,000 or so.
Another Internet resource played a vital role: EasyBib, which isn’t free, but it is inexpensive and well worth the money ($4.99 a month, but only $29.99 for a lifetime membership). EasyBib allows the creation of an unlimited number of bibliographies, using MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, or a host of other reference styles. The information is stored on line, but a bibliography can be downloaded as a Word document, properly formatted in the chosen style.
WorldCat and EasyBib also work together. After finding a book in WorldCat, you can choose to export it to EasyBib and the entry is automatically added to the bibliography.
After I had done all the weeding out, I checked my results against the professional football bibliography compiled by Myron J. Smith in 1993, which resulted in about 50 more titles being added. I also checked the "Football Books" section of the Pro Football Researchers Association forum and did a search for "football" at Amazon.com, sorting the results by publication date, to see if I had missed any recent books. I found perhaps five or six new titles.
Having assembled the list of titles, I set out to categorize them. This took a lot of thought, followed by a bit of trial and error, but I finally settled on a scheme that seemed to work reasonably well. There are 23 major categories, many of which have sub-categories. Some of the sub-categories also have sub-sub-categories; e.g., "History" is a major category, "Professional Teams" is one of its sub-categories, and "Arizona Cardinals" is the first sub-sub-category.
Of course, some books might fit about equally well into either of two categories, and a few might even fit into more than two, so a certain amount of editorial discretion enters into categorization. For several categories, I’ve written a brief introduction explaining the criteria for inclusion in that category and suggesting other categories that might hold similar works.
Each listing contains the following information, where available: Author’s name, title, place of publication, publisher, year of publication, ISBN-10 and -13 numbers, OCLC number, the number of pages, whether the book contains illustrations, and the physical dimensions. I included the ISBN numbers because they allow easy lookup on the sites of major booksellers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The OCLC number similarly allows the user to find nearby libraries that carry the title, through the WorldCat website.

JohnTurney wrote:will be buying that one .. . is there going to be an electronic version?

Jay Z wrote:Ralph, this is a book where I say "I wish I would have done that", so I like your initiative!

In an unrelated matter, I play in a trivia contest in Stevens Point, WI. Back when books were useful in the contest, we got a lot of answers out of your Who's Who Of Sports Champions book. That was a very useful and accurate book! Best of luck with the new book!

John Grasso wrote:I just received my copy. Great job, Ralph. And reasonably priced.
Thank you.