I’ve been having the most interesting exchange with Mark in the comments on my last post. I love it how a seemingly simple discussion about jargon can push me to interrogate my mission and place within the educational system in ways I’d never articulated before. Have I mentioned recently how much I love the fact that we can have this type of discussion so easily these days? Well, I do.
Comments closedThis year I’ve been shamelessly cribbing off one of my co-workers who’s mantra is “scholars index their own literature.” At first, I didn’t know what she meant, but the more I work with the idea, the more I absolutely love it, especially for the “softer” areas of study where traditional indexing falls short (yes, I’m thinking of the MLA International Bibliography, here).
Here’s the idea, indexers can give a general sense of the primary topics of a given article. Scholars, however, make use of other scholars’ work as it relates to their own work. The web of citations that builds as each area cites relevant works is often a much richer, much more crafted set of interrelations than any result set is. (Incidentally, this is where dissertations are a great help, since part of a dissertator’s project is to map his field and place himself within that field… jackpot for those looking for a starting place in the web of interconnections.)
The problem is that tracing this web of interrelations also takes a whole lot longer than plunking keywords into a bibliographic database and clicking “Search.” Still… if there’s time, and especially if direct searching isn’t working, this is one of those other options that can, sometimes, pay off.
Now I just need to figure out how to explain this succinctly to freshmen. “Scholars index their own literature” doesn’t make much sense when “index” and “literature” are jargon within the scholarly community.
12 CommentsOn Friday we had the great honor of receiving the ACRL Excellence in Libraries Award in the College Library division. Our college president, while introducing the award to those present at the Honors Convocation spoke about the importance of collaboration and of intellectual curiosity on a college campus, and of how he sees these twin values in evidence in the library and across campus. And looking around at all the students, faculty, and staff, at all the representatives of various academic and computer support teams, and at the supervisor of the students who do all our public computing support in the library, I realized again how lucky I am to work in this place. I realized yet again that the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts here, because no one of us alone could have done anything approaching award-worthy work. And I realized for the millionth time what an amazing experience it has been for me to work here as I learn to be a librarian in the midst of this type of community.
So what will we do with the award money? Well, people nominated ideas and we all voted, and kudos to whomever came up with this idea: we’re donating it to Katrina-damaged Dillard University’s library.
2 CommentsWhile we all run headlong toward the end of the term, a quiet transformation is taking place on campus. The seniors with the most – er – unique styles are suddenly turning up with shaved faces, fewer piercings, more form-fitting (and less hole-decorated) clothing, and combed hair.
I sense job interviews in the offing.
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