(no subject)

[catsittingstill]

Well, my vacation ended and I went back to work. I was starting to get bored the last few days of vacation, so I think it was time. This is a really exciting time at work because the boss and I are writing a grant, and some of the stuff I've been working on (and even some of the results I produced) will be incorporated into it. I have a lot to learn about the background of this research problem and I've been frantically reading papers, trying to get caught up, to see how what other groups have done can give us hints of the directions we should explore.
In the course of this, I've been using the wireless connection at the University of Tennessee a lot. They have a setup there where any student or staff member can bring in a laptop, register it with the Unversity, and then connect from pretty much anywhere on campus. I can take my computer to the library and instead of searching for a free computer to check the card catalog, I can just use mine. Or I can read the library's collection of e-journals (and most of the science journals are online now) on my computer--or save articles as PDFs to print out when I get home. This makes the literature search part of writing ridiculously easy. In the time I used to take to look up a reference (which I would then have to physically track down in the library, haul over to the photocopier, and photocopy for 10 cents a page) I can now download the reference onto my hard drive to read or print at my leisure. I spent about 15 minutes yesterday obtaining a dozen or so references I ran across in one journal article. It's so easy it doesn't feel real. This information revolution kind of snuck in behind my back and established itself as a matter of course while I was looking the other way.
My life's ambition is now to always be associated with a university so I can have this kind of access. :-)

Comments

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Cat --

Yes. It blew my mind as well, during the last few years of my career, and I still can't believe how quickly one can nail down half-remembered technical or scientific references.

For the more general issues, like unravelling half-heard cultural referents (e.g., "Mrs. Jack" and "Sargeant"), Google is your friend. But still, you must constantly remind yourself of the resource.

The downer is, when someone asks a question like that on LJ, and I do my research in a few minutes, and reply in a comment, I often sound like a damned pedant (at least to myself).

Perhaps that is an overreaction to the fact that every question, even what used to be known as "idle questions," can often be answered rapidly, in great detail, with multiple references to texts, particularly if you know the general field already, and have the magic keywords.

Gee, it sounds almost like wizardry.

Dave Alway

[braider.livejournal.com]

I was quite delighted that someone was able to answer my question, actually. I didn't know how to spell Sargent, and Mrs. Jack is a bit too vague to google.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) Well, you don't sound like a damned pedant to me, but maybe I tend a little toward pedantry myself. I'm always a little iffy about Google--there's a lot of good stuff on the 'net but a lot of trash too, and if it's not your field it may be hard to sort them out. (At least, I find it hard.)

But the whole electronic references thing is just great. Of course, you still have to *read* them the old fashioned way :-)