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quislibetThere's a flame war of sorts on one of the academic lists I read at work; someone wrote in asking for bibliographical guidance, but in an off-putting way: could the scholars of the list help cut through the "silly" amount of scholarship published each year on such-and-such a topic and give the person posting guidance on what from the last twenty years or so was worth reading?
While I can certainly see the problems inherent in such a request, I can't help but remember an incident (perhaps touched upon previously in these pages) from my second year of grad school (or was it my third?). At that time, the graduate students of the department had (and perhaps still have, but I'm out of touch) a certain amount of money at our disposal every year for travel to conferences, making additions to the departmental library, even socializing. In that particular year, we asked that each faculty member take a moment to recommend some key articles relevant to his or her research specialty; we would then pay to obtain and keep at hand copies of those articles for our library.
Well, possibly it would have been better to approach our professors individually, for they are usually only too glad to impart their store of wisdom to eager young minds, at least if you happen to catch them on a good day during posted office hours. But as it happened, the faculty, considering the request in a faculty meeting, chose not to encourage such "laziness." Let those slackerly grad students figure out for themselves what they should or shouldn't read!
So we used the money for a keg party, which was uncontroversial.
While I can certainly see the problems inherent in such a request, I can't help but remember an incident (perhaps touched upon previously in these pages) from my second year of grad school (or was it my third?). At that time, the graduate students of the department had (and perhaps still have, but I'm out of touch) a certain amount of money at our disposal every year for travel to conferences, making additions to the departmental library, even socializing. In that particular year, we asked that each faculty member take a moment to recommend some key articles relevant to his or her research specialty; we would then pay to obtain and keep at hand copies of those articles for our library.
Well, possibly it would have been better to approach our professors individually, for they are usually only too glad to impart their store of wisdom to eager young minds, at least if you happen to catch them on a good day during posted office hours. But as it happened, the faculty, considering the request in a faculty meeting, chose not to encourage such "laziness." Let those slackerly grad students figure out for themselves what they should or shouldn't read!
So we used the money for a keg party, which was uncontroversial.
