Tim's comments were 'pre-seconded' by professor Timothy Burke at the
meeting on the future of bibliographic control.
http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/meetings/2007_mar08.html
He described how he does research (and it doesn't involve the library
catalog very much), and said that what a scholar really needs are these
tools:
* the ability to recognize clusters of knowledge production (persons
and subjects),
* the lineage of publications (i.e., how they exist in chronological
relationship to each other),
* the ability to make previously unknown connections among resources,
* the ability to make serendipitous or unforeseen connections among
topics,
* identification of the authoritativeness of sources,
* the popularity/amount of use of a resource, and
* the sociology of knowledge, for example the "pedigree" of authors
and publishers.
kc
Tim Spalding wrote:
>> "These findings suggest thata searcher who is unwilling to search multiple databases or adopt
>> a sophisticated search strategy is likely to achieve better than average recall and precision
>> by using Google Scholar."
>>
>
> It's always weirded me out that these conversations suppose that
> finding useful scholarly information is about choosing between
> different machines that search the world of articles, books and so
> forth.
>
> When I was working on my PhD (not finishing it) by *FAR* the most
> important methods were:
>
> 1. Citations in other scholarly sources
> 2. Recommendations from graduate students and professors
>
> With number one being far above number two. That is, the best way get
> into a topic is to find anything relevant and relatively recent, and
> then start working out through the footnotes and citations. A Google
> or OPAC search could kick this off, or later could fill in some more
> recent references, but the core method of scholarship was *in the
> scholarship*!
>
> Sometimes, the best finding method is not only in the scholarship, but
> actually created by the scholars. Sometimes its a scholarly reference
> tool, like the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Sometimes it's something
> more focused. In Alexander-the-Great studies, for example, one
> scholar, Waldemar Heckle, has compiled—and continues to compile—an
> organized and annotated bibliography of books and articles about
> Alexander that is better than anything ever produced.
> (http://hum.ucalgary.ca/wheckel/alexande.htm) If you're interested in
> Alexander, it's the answer. Compared to Heckle's bibliography, the
> other options are tiddlywinks. (Google wins out, however, because
> Google includes Heckle's work—ranked pretty high—whereas no OPAC or
> article index does.)
>
> So, it seems to me that these conversations are fundamentally
> off-kilter from how real scholarship takes place. Maybe we should
> judge tools some other way, like how quickly they get you started, or
> whether they leverage the intelligence of scholars and graduate
> students. It seems to me that Google wins on both fronts right
> now—it's quick and inherently based on crowdsourced opinion—but I
> don't want to be dogmatic. I'm not sure the right tools have been
> invented for really helping scholars.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Tue Mar 03 2009 - 10:46:24 EST