The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [154]
Online Research
OWING TO ONE THING and another, I seem to have developed an odd reputation as a writer whose career is inextricably intertwined with the Internet. Consequently, many people assume that I must naturally be doing all of my research online, through Web-surfing.
Frankly, while the Internet is a valuable tool for locating people and resources, I can’t imagine doing serious historical research using the Web as a primary source. The depth of information and breadth of detail that one needs just doesn’t exist on most Web pages, and the process of searching is much more tedious and time-consuming than is browsing in a good library—with less chance of success.
This is not to say that one can’t find very interesting bits and pieces on the Web—and services such as amazon.com and ukbooks.com are invaluable for locating and delivering books conveniently. Likewise, Web-searching can lead you through the holdings of large university libraries and help you find where to go—but Web-surfing is only an adjunct to sound library research, not a replacement for it.
However, one mustn’t overlook other aspects of online research; beyond the existence of Web sites, one can locate remarkably helpful people with expertise in various fields, through the large subscription services (like AOL and CompuServe) and various newsgroups.
If so, stop writing down specific titles (which is a big pain), and simply write down the common call-number prefix. Go to the stack(s) where that call number is located, and browse in person. You will invariably find a number of books that are related in topic to what you were searching for, but which didn’t appear in the card catalog search because they weren’t entered with the specific key words under which you were searching. (As a small example: Drums of Autumn would not come up under a search for NORTH CAROLINA, in spite of the fact that the book is set there, because the person who catalogued it for the Library of Congress evidently didn’t read more than the first chapter. Since the first chapter is set in Charleston, the book is catalogued under SOUTH CAROLINA, even though the book itself has nothing to do with that state.)
Another benefit to shelf-browsing is that it enables you to look directly at the book, rather than judging on the basis of title alone whether this is something you need or not. If you’re not sure, check the table of contents and the index; that should tell you within seconds whether this book has any information that might be of use to you.
How to Read a Book for Information
Writers occasionally come up to me at conferences and say things like, “Oh, I’d love to do a historical novel. But I just can’t bear the thought of all that reeeeeeeseeeeearch.” “Research” is always pronounced in a dismal whining tone, when used in this context.)
I suspect that such persons are under the delusion that “reeeeeseeeearch” involves reading every single word of hundreds of terribly boring books, while taking copious notes on eye-glazing topics from “annealing processes used in the early Bronze Age” to “zoofauna of the digestive tract of the Western hoopoe,” meanwhile juggling billions of index cards with one hand tied behind one’s back.
Well, look. If you can see that a given book is boring, why the heck would you waste hours reading it? There’s a major difference between reading a book, and gleaning necessary information from it. There’s also a major difference between doing research for a historical novel, and doing research for a Ph.D. thesis (ask the woman who’s done both).
Say you scan the card catalog and