I was embarrassed to have set a story in a setting I'd never researched, so I hied myself to the public library. I ended up in the children's section, self-conscious indeed as squealing kids and their suspicious mothers made their way past the aisle where I was camping out. Clearly, I did not belong — I was either too tall or too young.
But I forgot about that as I began pulling books from the shelves. The equivalent shelf in the adult nonfiction section had been sparsely populated, and the few books present far too specific to meet my needs. But the kids' books were surveys of the material, and written simply without the need for some grand thesis. I once got annoyed at an acclaimed documentary, because the content of the narration was simple and already known to me. But there are always going to be people who are starting from square one, and that's me with this subject, so simple is good. Once I've gotten a decent overview, then I'll start abusing the ILL system to get some more in-depth material. I miss borrowing privileges at my local academic library...
Of course, in order to make these books last as long as possible while in the hands of young 'uns likely to tear them apart and chew on them, they tend to be hardcover, even if they're slender. And of course they've got to be oversized to fit in more illustrations — or maybe just more than a sentence per page. So grabbing just a decent sampling of that Dewey section meant staggering home and nursing sore triceps. (Honestly, I don't think I was ever so fit as when I worked full-time in a library.) Worse, it means no reading these in bed, when I like to lie on my back and hold up the books to read.
I suppose they won't take much time to read through, though.