Persona/period research...

[LIB_IMC at centum.utulsa.edu]

<"Pug" <pug at arlut.utexas.edu>>
>Historical research is not something that I have started until recently.
>This makes it difficult for me to judge something as useful, let along
>accurate. I'm enjoying the reading though when I do find things that I
>find of interest.

It's an acquired skill, and differs slightly for each new area.  I personally
find it handy to keep Ockham's Razor nearby and to keep it stropped to a
keep edge.

>This I may need help with, since I've not heard of it. Most of my
>searches have been through UT's catalogue as subject keyword searches.
>I'm gonna try LoC to see if I can find better references, then try to
>get it at UT.

Something to keep in mind dealing with ANY cataloguing of a work is that
it was done by a human being, and that human being probably didn't actually
read the silly thing.  Moreover, you have to try and second-guess the sorts
of key words they would have gone for.  One major benefit of checking the
CIP info is it can give you a "feel" for the sorts of subject headings that
"They" might have used.

>I'm trying to figure out how to find reliable references for the time
>period even. All too often the books I've found cover 800 years, which
>although good, they don't cover specific regions...

I know a rule of thumb to test a work on "Anglo-Saxons" is if they dump
Kent and York into the same pile :)

>I can at least focus down to the King(s) of the time period. Getting
>things covering their reigns might be at least a little more focused.

Hill, David.  An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England.  It *does* compile THAT
information.

Also, something to remember about UT, particularly UT Austin is that the
last time I checked, they still have a split catalog.  This means that
many of the older materials are listed only in the card catalog, NOT the
Online Catalog.  While they may have done the "retrospective conversion"
needed to correct that, I haven't heard one way or the other.  You might
want to check.

(N.b., MANY large libraries have this sort of catalog, which can make research
a bit of a pain, particularly if you are just dialing in.)

>This sounds great! I will see if I can find more information on this.
>Getting that close to the time period and region could be a miracle.

Actually, I thought you'd done it intentionally :)

>Very true. I was mostly hoping for a kick in the right direction since
>until now I've done no historical research. This is definately a new
>leaf for me, and I find it amazing that once I get started into a book,
>I don't easily pull my head out of it. Only if I could have done that
>while in school. *grin*

Let me go ahead and take a look at the UT catalog and see what I can find,
and get back to you.

Diarmuit
(or More Accurately, since Diarmuit doesn't DO Online Library Research - Marc)