I am the kind of person that needs to keep doing something when I’m not doing anything. The semester has been over for about two weeks and in my relative free time I have been working with Rhonda to collect research for her dissertation. Most recently I have been focusing on collecting dissertations that have anything and everything to do with Col. Allen Allensworth. The process is long and arduous. Stuck in cold dark rooms with latex gloves on to protect documents, the search is meticulous… well at least that’s the way it was.
I have the luxury, thanks to the many scholars who came before me, of using the vast collection of sources available through the internet. With the help of Rice University’s Fondren Library and the access it provides to various indexes and databases secondary, and sometimes primary, source research can all be done in the comforts of one’s home. Personally I like to listen to very loud and obnoxious music when working like this because it helps keep me from zoning out on one fascination of historical fact. So using the resources a library can provide over the internet is a great way to attack that looming end of semester project, or your own personal research. Unfortunately the access to the Fondren Library’s digital index collection is limited to Rice students. If you are a UH-D student like I am access to many of the same databases available on the Rice network can be found on the UH-D library’s website. If you are a UH central student then you have the same access as a UH-D student, just through the MD Anderson Library.
Becoming familiar with the resources you are provided is essential to getting your work done in a timely manner. I have struggled far too long wading through results that don’t match my query, results that do match but don’t have anything to do with my subject, and no results at all. Now that I am learning with the help of Rhonda how to do research the smart way it makes a big difference how you use each database. I will try to cover more on the different databases in the future.
