Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers, and welcome back from the weekend!

I had some final thoughts over the weekend about last week’s “It’s Not All on JSTOR” posts that I want to share with you this morning.

First off, I’m not picking on JSTOR in particular — indeed, I could have written “It’s Not All on Academic Search Premier,” or, “It’s Not All on Google Scholar,” or, “It’s Not All on [insert name of database or search engine one might use exclusively].”  My intention, rather, was to highlight the dangers of using one and only resource when trying to do philosophical research.

Secondly, as St. Thomas Aquinas said in the Prooemium to De Ente et Essentia, a small mistake at the beginning leads to major errors in the end.  Keeping this in mind, the real point of these posts is to focus on the how of searching, i.e., how you set up your searches, how you think about searching, how you formulate your research questions when you start, how you determine where to look, and so forth.  In other words, make sure your searches, even if for only one article, are set up properly right from the start. If you stop and take a few minutes to think about this process before you start searching, you may find that, over time, your searching becomes easier and less frustrating.  Following the guidelines that I’ve laid out, you will find that you will spend less time searching for materials in the wrong places, and more time find them in the right places.

The good news for my philosophically-trained readers is that we are trained to make sure we have our questions clearly stated and articulated right from the beginning.  So, it’s really just a matter of taking a skill we use in one context, and employing it in a slightly different one.

Thoughts?