Philobiblon

I’ve been doing lots of blog browsing – checking up for my host role in Carnivalesque, so it counts as work, really!

I’m saving the historical gems for the carnival, but three other glittering posts to share:

1. A joke to be enjoyed by anyone who has ever had any contact with “consultants”. (And in my UN development days I was one, at least part-time, which involved in one instance my advising a woman on a country about which I knew nothing, and she’d been doing a PhD in Sydney when I was in nappies – I’m afraid I didn’t “value-add” much there, and probably picked out a few “dogs”.)

2. Dr Charles muses on the potential medical risks of thongs. (I mean the underwear sort, not the rubber flip-flop sort, for Australian readers.)

3. The serious one. MGK was visiting a Microsoft project trying to realise Vannevar Bush’s truly revolutionary post-WWII vision of information management and pointing out some potential hitches in the plans. I find this fascinating because it is something I have wanted ever ince the internet started, and indeed before.

I was one of those odd children who wanted to collect facts and figures and never to forget them – the wall above my desk when I was 11 or so was a sea of nails with folders of facts hang on them, and ever since I’ve been battling to keep track of everything I want to know. And as I said in my most recent thesis, it is what the internet really needs. (Search for Vannevar to get to the relevant bit.)

On that line, I was interested to read Clioweb’s post on the “Scribe” notetaking programme, apparently specifically designed for historians, and a commenter’s reference to Endnotes.

Some time soon, and yes I do mean pretty soon, I hope to create a lot more space in my life for historical research, and I will need to move on from my undergraduate-acquired method of research – photocopying everything that doesn’t move and scribbling all over it, and filling books with Stick-it notes. Any comments or recommendations would be most welcome.