Books and library things.

What role does the library have in a student’s work?

Well, I’m glad you asked. In my very limited experience the library has been purely a quiet study space. I know, lame. But thankfully, it appears the library is actually very useful. Today’s trip to Carlton library saw us actually engaging with the library in a research context. The thing that surprised me was how official everything is. The library provides a hell of a lot of books. I am honestly astounded that they have managed to catalogue all of the resources they have pooled form multiple online sources and their own collections. I actually had no idea that you could search so much of the library online; I imagined myself trawling through shelves trying to find the right book.

How do you think you will research in Old’s Cool?

My usual process for academic research was really searching jstor for hours trying to find a great source and then occasionally Google Scholar when I couldn’t find what I wanted. Of course, then, turning my internet history upside down to find all the various things I accessed that day and running them through citation websites and cross checking them. I think most likely I will use the LibrarySearch in conjunction with jstor pretty much exclusively as a starting point this year. I really like the ability to favourite and access things later without literally just burning through my history to find that killer quote I forgot to cite as I went. I think also a lot of research will come from old media artefacts.