Quote:
Originally Posted by Nabeel
But I've got to confess that some of my greatest, most useful discoveries have been in second-hand bookshops. I think the point here is that you get away from the tyranny of the key-term. I've got a good example of this: a while ago I was researching hippies. I missed a whole cache of relevant material as it was categorised under 'beatniks'. In a bookshop, I can compensate for this: I can see that although a title doesn't include my exact key-term, it might still be relevant.
|
That's the point, though. You cannot assume that books about hippies will include the word "hippie" in their title, any more than I could assume that literary criticism of Shakespeare will include the word "Shakespeare" in their title. Organising books by Dewey decimal classification, as libraries and good bookshops do, is a far more productive method of research.