Drowning in paperwork

During my undergraduate degree I prided myself on always being able to find good references and papers to cite in my essays, I enjoyed searching stuff out, and people came to me for advice on how to do so.

Therefore when I started the masters, although I knew things had changed, I was looking forward to this aspect of the course.  Oh My Bob, how things have changed.

Back in the early 2000s the Internet was definitely around, I used it often, but if you wanted some reading for an essay you knew that your first port of call was the library 'Star' catalogue.  A Sheffield Uni library search facility, then you noted the location of the book (Dewey number) and went searching or reserved a copy.

If you'd been told of a paper in a journal, or the citations in a book had led to a journal, you looked up the location and went into the stacks to hunt it down - the thrill of the chase!  You always had a fair idea that you'd got all you could on a given subject, there was little more you could do than write the essay.

Fast forward to 2011 and it's possible to get everything you might need from the comfort of your bed if you wanted (and have a laptop).  Just login to the Uni network and off you go.

I've barely used Star as there seem to be so few books relevant to my subject (they'd be out of date before they were published), and anyway there are so few copies of most that it's not worth checking in the IC (Information Commons).

You won't be surprised to know that 98% of the reading I'm doing is journal articles. So, where do I get them?  Through the Uni library, but not Star.  Also on the library web pages are links to various e-resources - ebooks, ejournals, and must important of all, databases.

These databases are available in a massive alphabetised list, and of course it's important to know which ones to look in (it's also useful to know which journals are available in which database.....), and then hope that the links work and that the library hasn't reached its ceiling of readers for that journal when you login. Thousands of journals and books available from all over the world without ever needing to get out of bed (except for more tea and biscuits).

Buy the t-shirt

You can see where this is going -INFORMATION OVERLOAD.  There are so many places to search, and that's before you even think about Google, Google Scholar or the Internet as a whole.  The problem becomes when to stop....it's like falling into a bottomless well of citation chasing.

With so much information comes the need for 'quality control' - is something worthy of my attention?  How old is too old (some journals are available back to over 100 years ago)? In the world of the internet and library management things are out of date in six months. Which authors are authorities on the subject (it's a new subject to me so I struggle with this one)? 

So I'm drowning in reading, I start one thing and then find a citation that looks interesting......and off I go again!

By the time I finish this Masters (if I ever finish an essay!), I'll have a rain forest worth of paper (although I always back to back print when I can).  I really can't cope with reading online for long as I like to highlight and scribble on the papers.