Blog Posts 1, 2

1:

Most of my research, like my work, is done haphazardly. My goal with research is less to find that one perfect document and more to finagle an understanding of an era from contemporary texts. Much of the research that I did as an undergraduate centered around primary documents and their recreations. Many of these works were old, fragile, and without proper annotation. The challenge that opens up before me when confronted with an enigmatic work is the thing that drives me to continue my research. My research tools in the past have been OskiCat, EEBO, JSTOR, the MED (Middle English Dictionary), Oxford Catalog, the Digital Scriptorium, and another Oxford Collection. These sources were able to allow me an understanding of the time period through offering an organized collection of the works. The best part of these sites is that several of them offer more than just prose or poetry. There are biographies, vitaes, illustrated editions, and histories.

I guess if my process had to be summarized it would go something like this: find interesting person/idea in time period, research person/idea through primary doc's, research person/idea through secondary docs, examine the affects of the person/idea on the larger scheme of time.

2:

I have to agree with Mike, who agrees with Quinn, who agrees with Hayley. The future of the literary discipline will take place in an almost entirely digital universe. Any marginal publications that are production intensive or costly will no longer have a physical form. The literary universe is merging with the digital one and there is very little that those of us who still value the aesthetics of books, libraries, and the literary process can do about it. I see the peer review process as moving further down this road as well. I can imagine a wiki styled site run by a community of experts, operating as moderators, that would allow peer discussion to take place in a healthy and productive environment. The movement into this digital realm will democratize the information so highly guarded in the top end libraries of today.

The notion of the 'invisible college' is interesting as it maps what many would see as a successful dissemination of information from the source. The invisible college is autonomous, run through the desires and whims of it's members. I believe that this structure is, like most resources on the internet, effective when dealing with the general, but not rigorous enough to cope with the abstract or specific. While these digital catalogues and communities may bring about a conversation, they certainly do not offer the final word.