Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Ellusive Perfect Article

I've been here in the basement of the University Library for, oh, at least and hour and half. I came here after work (ok, with a quick stop at Target to procrastinate just a little) and am imposing a rule on myself that I cannot leave until I find an article for my Read and React assignment that's due on Wednesday.
I was hoping to do this yesterday, hell, I was hoping to write the damn thing yesterday, but I spent the entire day reading for and writing my Issue Response that's due tomorrow. It's frustrating that it takes a whole day to write a 750 word (that's like, a page and half) paper - but there's still all this reading and "critical thought" (i.e. - how the hell do I semi-eloquently say what I would otherwise just tell the Prof. in person) involved, it ends up taking way longer than I'd like.
So it would seem it is the same is true for these Read and Reacts. This is my second one, and I swear it takes longer to find a damn article to write about than to write the reaction itself, which is only a 100 word abstract and 500 word response.
There's a subtle science to finding the right article: You don't want it to be too long, because you are going to have to read the freaking thing. Can't be too short, cuz it has to have enough substance to actually review, and ya know, care about somewhat. That care about thing comes into play quite abit, cuz while you're reading you are also trying to figure out how you're going to write something about it - if you are uninterested, you will come up with nothing. It needs to be from a reputable source, and again, the page length comes into play, because I don't want to spend two dollars printing out/coping an article, or several that won't end up working. Some articles you start to reading thinking they'll work, that some how you'll be able to relate this to library science, only to discover that it's not, and has to be abandoned.
So, after an hour of searching, I kinda cheated.
Except I don't really think it's cheating, because this is a big part of being a good Librarian: finding reliable sources quickly.
What I'd done last time wasn't working (basically, browsing JSTOR with key words) so I thought, "well, what did my classmates do theirs on last time?" Of course there's a kid in class whose even more anal, I mean, "on-top-of-it," than I am - he's been the first to post his responses both times. I look at his response from the journal "Library Administration and Management." Well hell, that could practically be a subtitle to this class , which means there's gotta be something in there. I go the shelf, find the current issue, and low and behold - a perfect 4 page article.

And it's only 8:30 pm! (that exclamation point is sarcasm by the way). Time to go home and feel "done" for the day. Tomorrow I have off of work, but, as you can probably guess, there's still a whole lot of school work that lays ahead of me. Basement Library Desk: I'll see you in 12 hours.

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