oof.

[veek]

The more I search around in the library catalog, the more books I find that could possibly go into my bibliography for the prelims next year. Where to stop? How to know what's most important, without reading them all?

There are always More Knowledgeable People to ask, I suppose.

Comments

Use the BDPOE

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

That's the Broke Dude's Process of Elimination. This system works best one library (or bookstore) at a time, so base it on concepts like "there are 70 possible matches at X Library, Y miles away".

1) Organize the list of books based on where they are in the library. This way, you can scan about ten at a sitting.

2) Grab some books. This may sound simple, but you know how some jacques oeuf will hijack some books for his All But Dissertation Yearlong Bookshelf and you'll not find a book. Take that as a hint that the book will be worth hunting down elsewhere and thus keeping on the list for a second round.

3) Skim, randomly. Start near the middle and read random parts. Skip around. As you lose attention, take note of the following, because these will be your criteria for elimination:

A. Did I drool on the book? If yes, you lost consciousness some time during the skim. Therefore the book has hypnotic powers, meaning other professors have referred to it because it hypnotized them. It goes on your B list.

B. Are there tons of citations, but mainly to two or three other books? Then the book is derivative. Ditch it for those two or three books in the bibliography.

C. Is it in a wicked obscure language that you know but your profs don't? Keep it on the list.

D. Does it have gnarly woodcuts? Then it stays on the list. You may be bored and the woodcuts may be uninspired, but you can call it a primary source or prrof of some kind of "evolution in the text". Blah blah. Frankly, pictures mean less reading and more interp.

From there, you can eliminate a lot of books. You can also get a head start on more research. You may think these solutions seem arbitrary, but so is deciding which texts get into the canon of Western lit.

-fastest solution I could conjure, Dante