610:540 Information Resources in Humanities
David Carr, Instructor
The brain is more like an artist than a machine. It constantly creates realities, actual and imaginary; it examines alternatives, spins stories, and thrives on experience. The brain picks up huge amounts of ÒinformationÓ on our journey through life, but only incidentally, the way our shoes pick up mud when we walk through the woods. Knowledge is a byproduct of experience, and experience is what thinking makes possible.
We are constantly thinking about what the world is like, and what it is likely to be like, and even about worlds that are most unlikely. Our expectations about the world constantly change as a consequence of our experience, and in the process we collect -- construct might be a better word -- "knowledge" or "information." The present would be incomprehensible if we could not relate it to the past, and meaningless if we could not relate it to the future. We are constantly thinking. We think with the contents of the brain, not about them.
Smith, Frank. 1990. To Think. New York: Teachers College Press, p. 12.
There is no competition here, nor are there right or wrong ways to do this; the purposes of all search tasks in this class are to think and talk about your searching experiences, nothing more.
Search for the attached topics using reference works you know from Katz and the list of general tools distributed in class. If you find nothing under the term given, get as close as you can to a relevant entry.
You may want to use conventional sources for background as needed. Consider the unanticipated source.
For example, can you find an entry relevant to "ballet" or "rap music" in the Business Periodicals Index? ... in the Encyclopedia of Associations or the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms? How successful can you be, using these general tools? How close can you come to these topics?
Meanwhile ... here is a second part of the problem. Do the tools you examine contain a subject heading or other category specifically titled "Humanities"? If so, what do you find under that term? If not, try such terms as "art" or "visual arts," "literature," "philosophy" and so on.
General Rules of Etiquette for Group Library Searching 1. Stay out of the way of working librarians. Don't ask them. Ask me. 2. You may ask your peers as well. Collaborate. 3. If you observe a density of students near certain tools, move on and return later. 4. Keep track of your successes and frustrations. At 8:15 we will meet to talk.