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Aug. 23rd, 2009 01:27 pmMy virus just won't go away. I'm sulking about it. When I sulk, I play with records and datasets. This was bad news for my main supervisor, way back when I did my doctorate: I produced some really handy profiles of Medieval works with historical foci as they appear in manuscripts. I used them for my thesis and for an article, but I never did anything with the article*. I like playing with records and datasets far more than I like going through the submission process for academic articles.
I can finally sit down for long enough (an hour at a time! my inflammation is not gone, but it's starting to stop interfering with my life) to begin to play, so that's what I did last night. I've ordered a single page from a mathematical journal to check just what the ANU's new scanning service does. This article contains my name, according to the searches I did, and I used to know the author and I cannot see why Ed would mention me in a scholarly article. If that one page magically appears in my email, thanks to the new ANU library services, I won't have to go into university when I can't and I won't have to copy articles for later looking. In other words, I can do more research even with the fiction writing and the poor health. Have I said recently how much I adore libraries and librarians?
The other thing I've done is explore the online acessibility of eighteenth century primary sources. This is more research for fiction than non-fiction, but the same skills apply. If I can locate the novels and access them online, I can read them even when I'm ill. In fact, I can transfer them to G'eeek and read them from my lounge chair, or when I'm travelling, or while I'm doing some of my exercises. It has the potential to put a whole range of thought-related things back on my agenda.
My emails are to thank for this. I want to worship at the feet of academic mail lists. There's a long discussion on one of my mail lists about a book tracker that's being set up for eighteenth century books, since projects such as Google Books handle them badly. Even five years ago I would have thought "Good, I can find out where the books are and go to the library and read them in situ" but now there's the possibility of reading them from home, which is much better, considering.
I never got as far as datasets last night, but playing with the new interfaces at the ANU library and looking at other peoples' datasets improved my temper even more than chocolate does. What I need in my next year, you see, are as many 18th century novels as possible. Also newspapers and articles from the period. The more I have on my computer, the more I can read, because I can fit them into my health needs and around my fiction.
This is only the merest whiffle of a start. I don't know what's around yet, I only know that I'll be able to find out what's around far more easily than I used to. And that the ANU may well be willing to email me crucial articles, which means I can get back to solid research next year. Or this year. I have an article due in December, and the last bits of it are the overviews and etceteras, all of which will be much easier if I can do them from home. I don't want to do the last bits of this article, to be honest. All the fun bits are complete and the research is finished - the rest is dull as ditchwater. Which is why I went from playing with online acess to databases to writing the apparatus for Baggage - I went for the most fun option to cheer myself up. I don't desperately enjoy doing the apparatus for books (copyright statements and the like) but I like doing that a lot more than I like turning an interesting project into something academically accceptable. Which is probably why my fiction is better than my academic stuff. Also why I write so few scholarly articles.
* which is probably a pity, because I managed to demonstrate that different aspects of the Arthurian tradition were distinctly regional in a slightly different way to what's mostly thought, based on the dialects of the scribes who copied the works. It was a lot of fun. And I should be quiet about it here, because I don't normally let that side of me loose in public. It's not the socially acceptable side, you see. It gets excited about all sorts of things that don't go down well at dinner parties. Which is a pity, because the scribal aspects of the Arthurian tradition from the 13th to 15th centuries is cool. I'm not working on it any more, though I've kept all my datasets and even my forlorn little article.
I can finally sit down for long enough (an hour at a time! my inflammation is not gone, but it's starting to stop interfering with my life) to begin to play, so that's what I did last night. I've ordered a single page from a mathematical journal to check just what the ANU's new scanning service does. This article contains my name, according to the searches I did, and I used to know the author and I cannot see why Ed would mention me in a scholarly article. If that one page magically appears in my email, thanks to the new ANU library services, I won't have to go into university when I can't and I won't have to copy articles for later looking. In other words, I can do more research even with the fiction writing and the poor health. Have I said recently how much I adore libraries and librarians?
The other thing I've done is explore the online acessibility of eighteenth century primary sources. This is more research for fiction than non-fiction, but the same skills apply. If I can locate the novels and access them online, I can read them even when I'm ill. In fact, I can transfer them to G'eeek and read them from my lounge chair, or when I'm travelling, or while I'm doing some of my exercises. It has the potential to put a whole range of thought-related things back on my agenda.
My emails are to thank for this. I want to worship at the feet of academic mail lists. There's a long discussion on one of my mail lists about a book tracker that's being set up for eighteenth century books, since projects such as Google Books handle them badly. Even five years ago I would have thought "Good, I can find out where the books are and go to the library and read them in situ" but now there's the possibility of reading them from home, which is much better, considering.
I never got as far as datasets last night, but playing with the new interfaces at the ANU library and looking at other peoples' datasets improved my temper even more than chocolate does. What I need in my next year, you see, are as many 18th century novels as possible. Also newspapers and articles from the period. The more I have on my computer, the more I can read, because I can fit them into my health needs and around my fiction.
This is only the merest whiffle of a start. I don't know what's around yet, I only know that I'll be able to find out what's around far more easily than I used to. And that the ANU may well be willing to email me crucial articles, which means I can get back to solid research next year. Or this year. I have an article due in December, and the last bits of it are the overviews and etceteras, all of which will be much easier if I can do them from home. I don't want to do the last bits of this article, to be honest. All the fun bits are complete and the research is finished - the rest is dull as ditchwater. Which is why I went from playing with online acess to databases to writing the apparatus for Baggage - I went for the most fun option to cheer myself up. I don't desperately enjoy doing the apparatus for books (copyright statements and the like) but I like doing that a lot more than I like turning an interesting project into something academically accceptable. Which is probably why my fiction is better than my academic stuff. Also why I write so few scholarly articles.
* which is probably a pity, because I managed to demonstrate that different aspects of the Arthurian tradition were distinctly regional in a slightly different way to what's mostly thought, based on the dialects of the scribes who copied the works. It was a lot of fun. And I should be quiet about it here, because I don't normally let that side of me loose in public. It's not the socially acceptable side, you see. It gets excited about all sorts of things that don't go down well at dinner parties. Which is a pity, because the scribal aspects of the Arthurian tradition from the 13th to 15th centuries is cool. I'm not working on it any more, though I've kept all my datasets and even my forlorn little article.