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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 736.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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[1] From: Tim Smithers
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.731: checking citations (132)
[2] From: Ken Friedman
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.734: checking citations (51)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2020-04-06 12:03:59+00:00
From: Tim Smithers
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.731: checking citations
Dear Willard,
You ask.
"Does anyone now teach beginning scholars these skills and
techniques digitally translated or entirely new?"
I would not want to claim I do as well as your well remembered
Professor from your MA days, but, yes, I do teach PhD students
how to what I still call 'library work.' They can indeed do
almost all of this work on their laptops, but it still needs
libraries, knowing which publication databases are relevant to
them, how to effectively and efficiently uses these databases
(ie not just doing simple searches), and then deciding what to
read from what they find, and how to do this reading such that
(some) understanding and appreciation results. All this, the
searches, selecting, and reading should, I insist, be recorded
in notes they make, together with a short summary of what the
reading of each article tells them, on this time of reading.
This comes in a PhD course I teach called Designing and
Building a Critical State of the Art for Research. I'm just
finishing doing this for three (small) groups of
mixed-discipline PhD students studying at the University of
the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). I usually do this in
conventional classroom settings, but it has hurriedly had to
be converted into an online course so that we can finish it in
our covid-19 governed world.
Yes, what I try to show students they need to do means this
'library work' takes serious time and effort, but, I also show
them that this is time well spent, since, if it is done well,
it saves time later on in the building of their state of the
art, and it results in their state of the art being built of
only read and understood work, and work of known quality and
contribution. (I've seen plenty of examples of students who
even admit to not having read all they cite in their critical
state of the art work.)
As you suggest, I think, it has always been like this, and the
internet and digital publishing doesn't change the need to
read to acquire (demonstrable) understanding when doing
research. The thing that the internet and digital publishing
has improved, in my experience, is the accuracy of
bibliographic data in reference lists. Like you, my PhDing
was done pre-internet, and involved time spent in physical
libraries, and the transcribing of reference data, and then
copying this into reference lists in publications. An error
prone way of doing things. Now, I tell students that they
must always and only download all bibliographic data from
databases or publisher websites straight into their preferred
bibdata tool.
I've been doing this PhD teaching for several years now, and
one of the most common comments I get from students is the
benefit they experience from having been shown how to
carefully select what to read and then how to read relevant
and related publications for their PhD work. Another
positively commented thing is the mixed-discipline groups for
the classes, typically from across the Arts, Engineerings,
Humanities, and Sciences. This significantly strengthens the
learning students do from the other students.
I imagine others here do this kind of thing too.
Best regards,
Tim
> On 05 Apr 2020, at 10:13, Humanist wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 731.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2020-04-04 07:37:11+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty
> Subject: citations
>
> I began the research for my doctoral dissertation well trained, taught
> always to check references. During that time, however, I first
> discovered how undependable a reference could be. In addition to errors
> from sloppiness I discovered the tell-tale phenomenon of citations that
> lead to others earlier that lead to others still earlier, in a long tail
> that eventually terminates in pure invention. Since then I've made it a
> practice to hunt down the original source and seldom gone unrewarded,
> not just by errors discovered but also by contexts as valuable, sometimes
> more so, than what an originating quotation or reference gave me.
> Doing such tracing is costly in time and effort, but nowadays can almost
> always be done without budging from one's desk (which, given the need for
> isolation at this moment stretching out into an indefinite future, is a
> very good thing).
>
> On the other hand, I've learned from my medievalist partner how the words
> of authorities were used in the early Middle Ages in glosses to important
> texts. So I am already inclined to wonder about the drive to exactitude
> in our bibliographic habits, even before I reflect on the influence of
> online resources. Some rethinking of the methods we advocate, perhaps?
>
> Long ago, in the one MA course I can still remember, a professor to
> whom I will always be grateful taught all of us beginners how to use a
> library, how to take notes (before photocopy machines), in short how to
> do research. Does anyone now teach beginning scholars these skills and
> techniques digitally translated or entirely new?
>
> Yours,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
> Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
> London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
> (www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)
>
>
>
>
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--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2020-04-06 11:12:37+00:00
From: Ken Friedman
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.734: checking citations
Dear Willard and all,
When I read your note the other day,
>> Long ago, in the one MA course I can still remember, a professor to
>> whom I will always be grateful taught all of us beginners how to use a
>> library, how to take notes (before photocopy machines), in short how to
>> do research. Does anyone now teach beginning scholars these skills and
>> techniques digitally translated or entirely new?
It reminded me of one of my doctoral professors, Dorothy Harris. She often
commented on the importance of care with sources. She ended many lectures with
what seemed to be her favourite motto:
"Be true to your sources and your sources will be true to you."
While I don't use the advanced digital tools that many on this list use, I do
use the digital versions of old paper tools, along with new sources such as web
sites. I teach doctoral students and colleagues the skills they need. As an
editor, I find that people use the skills when they write for my journal - but
that's because I set the standards.
It was different when I was a dean and professor in Australia. I gave a lecture
on these issues to the doctoral students every year. There was always a student
who explained that this material wasn't important and that I was far too
fussy. Apparently, some of the doctoral supervisors had this opinion, and told
their students in clear terms that this kind of care was over the top.
This kind of careless teaching is apparently common in some fields. I recently
read an article by a well known journal editor lamenting the fact that he was
obliged to use desk reject for many articles from people with a PhD simply
because they could not manage the basic issues that an article requires for
publication.
Interesting thoughts.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in
Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-
journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation
| Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Eminent Scholar | College of Design,
Art, Architecture, and Planning | University of Cincinnati ||| Email
ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com | Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman
| D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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