Library Research in 2013

I don’t give many glimpses into my life as a dissertation writer, but it struck me today that library research may be quite different than it used to be. I started writing my first masters thesis 20 years ago and I remember spending long hours in several libraries in Jerusalem, photocopying articles sparingly because of the cost involved. I had a portable computer but could do little more with it than word-processing. Fast-forward to my very last thesis (or writing project of any kind ever!) and things have changed a bit. Here’s what I did today.

I was out the door before 7 in order to beat the traffic and arrive at the library by its 7:30 opening time. The rain slowed the driving down, but I was moving among the stacks well before 8. I had in my hand a two-sided sheet with references I printed out last night. I use Endnote for managing my references and have a group called “Get in Library.” I exported this group with the call number prefixed to each reference and sorted it by call number so I could just walk through the stacks in order and pull off the books I need. As I walk and pull books, I occasionally see other books that might be helpful and I grab those too.

I bring these all to my carrel (a semi-private desk offered to doctoral students) and go through them one by one. In some cases, I have already written out the desired page numbers in the reference. In other cases, it’s easy to figure out the pages of interest (e.g., certain verses in a commentary). Sometimes I have to dig for a while in a book to find what is of interest. In cases of articles, I often select the whole. I write these page numbers on my sheet next to the book.

When this is done, I grab the stack of books and head down to the basement where there are two full-size copiers that also function as scanners. These fit books up to 11×17 which means that I can almost always fit both facing pages of the book on the screen for a single scan. Scans are free and go directly to a pdf file that I save to my USB key. The scanner is fast and I can probably make about 6 scans a minute (= 12 pages in a book). I love the speed, the cost, and the fact that I don’t have to flip the book back and around for each facing page. From here, I drop the books off at a library cart and begin round two. This morning I finished my fourth round just in time for my noon lunch with a distinguished professor (literally).

I’m not done, however. Upon arriving home, I copy the pdf files (about 40 of them today) to my hard disk so I can name them. The preview pane in Windows Explorer makes this easier, and I make use of my library printout to help me recall in cases where it is not clear. I name each file with the author’s last name, year, and the title. (This step is unnecessary given what I do in the last step, but I prefer to do it as a safety measure.)

Now I go through and crop each file to eliminate the black areas on the margins. (I like reading nice looking files.) There are a few tricks that make this go a bit quicker (the “C” key, when activated, and Alt-A). Each file takes about 10 seconds. Once that is done, I sort the files into separate folders by language in preparation for running the text recognition feature in Acrobat. If you don’t do this, Acrobat won’t treat German and French characters appropriately. Then Acrobat can process all files of each language at one time. Today I had 1 German, 2 French and the rest in English. For the last, it took about 30 minutes during which I read my day’s mail and email. By having text recognition done, I can easily copy/paste quotes into my notes. This is also handy with a foreign-language text with Google Translator.

The last step is to attach each file to the bibliographic reference in Endnote. This is a quick drag and drop that will forever make it easy to quickly locate the associated pdf file. At the same time, I also move the reference from the “Get in Library” group to the “Read Today” (or other) group. As needed, I add new bibliographic entries (for the books I discovered while browsing) and correct existing entries. In one case today, I scanned only a portion of the chapter but did not realize that I did not have the full page numbers for the chapter that I need for the bibliographic entry. So that reference stays in my “Get in Library” group to check on my next visit.

I finished the day’s work just as dinner was being served, so it was a full day to get 40 sources ready for note-taking tomorrow. But I’m pleased with the system and think that a little extra work in the short run saves hassle (and 30-minute drives to DTS) in the long run. Many times I’ve needed to go back to a source and it was easy to find. Endnote is not free, but it’s worth many times the cost to me.

In case you ‘re curious, in my “Jehu Done” group, I have 484 references. I have another 300 in the “To Read” stack and 53 in my two Get-In-Library groups. There are 10 articles or chapters in my “Fun” group, and 3 in my Interlibrary Loan set. Altogether, including references from my previous thesis, class papers, and arguments, my Endnote database has 2,962 references.

I have no idea if this detail, or any of this at all, is of interest to most of my readers. If nothing else, I’ve just preserved a snapshot of my life that may be of interest to me in 20 years. Perhaps then I ‘ll look back and say, “How utterly primitive!”