Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 258.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-12-09 07:46:52+00:00
        From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.254: always there?

> to capture to whatever degree possible everything in and about the sources we
came across

i agree, i do that with Zotero
it helps you to keep things in the type and level of order you want,
allows to annotate everything,
allows to import everything from the web and adding anything already in
your computer,
allows to jot down thoughts,
allows to search any text in any source

> Should one act as if what's out there will always be there?

even if everything would be there to stay, what won't be there is our
perception face to the source.
the perception will change, what seemed irrelevant reveals itself
relevant, sometimes after days and you are no more able to (re)discover
that source

Maurizio


Il 08/12/25 08:47, Humanist ha scritto:
>          Date: 2025-12-07 11:30:51+00:00
>          From: Willard McCarty<willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>          Subject: always there?
>
> A teacher of mine in an otherwise undistinguished MA programme in
> English literature imprinted me with a scholarly habit that has stayed
> with me and survived translation from pen and paper into my digital
> practices. Its survival as proven to be to a degree one might suspect
> would have declined steeply with the onset of the web--but hasn't.
> Hence a question to practitioners here.
>
> He told us students then to capture to whatever degree possible
> everything in and about the sources we came across. (This was, I must
> note, before photocopy machines, decades before the web. Then the
> physical card catalogue was one's starting point.) He took us
> out of the classroom and into the library, where he taught us the
> rudiments of research. Many of these have changed utterly. But his basic
> advice hasn't. He said to us that whenever you have a book in your
> hands, write down everything about it you may ever need to know,
> for you may never see that book again. His was, hands down, the most
> valuable course in that programme. No one else ever bothered to teach
> me the basics, in particular to think so carefully about the mechanics
> of research.
>
> Many years later I translated his lesson into my digital scholarly
> behaviours, capturing everything practical to capture, downloading
> journal papers and books, scanning in books I cannot find online,
> storing all on my computer. A few minutes ago I went to the (sadly
> much debilitated) Internet Archive for something I do not have and
> found the Archive offline. My MA teacher's words came to mind.
>
> My question: is it not naive in this unstable world of ours to assume
> that his advice is no longer prudent? Should one act as if what's out
> there will always be there?


------------------------------------------------------------------------

s'il n'y a même plus l'humour pour nous alléger
comment lutter
prohom, comment lutter

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio Lana
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli


_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php