I’ll be very content when Wikipedia overhauls this flat database skeleton.

I come from a background where the graduate students must have a firm background on research resources because that is the only way they get positions with advisors to go on in their education.

Don’t give me this crap that Poor people can’t do research for themselves – I came from a Poor background. It’s not physcial poverty that brings you patrons – it’s mental poverty you’re fighting.

I went to the reference desk with my requests once and I learned in about ten seconds I was wasting their time. Anything they could tell me I already knew. Anything they could show me I already used. The only function they could actually fill was InterLibraryLoans of journal documents – and you’d think there’s be higher scanning standards for what passes as an acceptable scan.

I have to question the value of resources that take this much cognitive ability just to be used. If it takes this much mind power to use them, then these resources are ripe for replacement.

I’ve tried to be polite to you in the past on this blog, but your attempt to question the question, as it were, only reveals your own arrogance and vacuity.

First of all, your claim that I keep “bringing up these rare Obscure questions only a Librarian could come up with” is ridiculous. Long before I was a librarian I used to ask questions like that; I asked plenty of librarians questions like that when I was in graduate school earning my Ph.D. Nor was I the only one to do so, and nor am I today. Whether the question is “rare and obscure” depends upon one’s point of view. In many public libraries it would be. But is it so rare in academic libraries? There’s a lot of universities out there with history and literature departments and it’s not like there’s only 1-2 people in the whole world who study eighteenth-century literature. You might not meet them on the street every day, but so what? Many questions asked in an academic research library aren’t the kinds you’d hear on the street every day. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. So the obscurity is dependent on point of view. Step down from your arrogant posturing and you might realize that.

The question I posed wasn’t a matter of simple factual information. It was a question that required the subjective judgement of someone familiar with the bibliography of early modern printed books. Notice I *didn’t* ask a question that had a simple cut-and-dried answer.

So your carp about “noobs” being too lazy to do work on their own or not knowing how to look for information is also invalid. You MIGHT have had a point if I had asked something like “give me a bibliography of early French books” and had been too lazy or ignorant to know about obvious answers like the BNF catalog. I didn’t. Instead I asked a question that would require someone to think about what ESTC is, what it does, how people use it, who had made anything similar for French works, how people used THAT, and how those uses actually and potentially converged and diverged. That requires judgement, not just knowledge of facts.

Further your statement “My problem with any bibliography collection is reviewer bias, coupled with company scope, further coupled with the amount of the bibliographic universe that the editor could cram in the edition, and finally finished off by the year the volume was published” reveals you don’t even understand my original question itself. We’re not talking about enumerative bibliography of the type used for evaluating contemporary collections and selecting materials. The question had to do with finding a resource that was similar to ESTC but covered early French imprints. So what the F*CK does “reviewer” bias have to do with it? There are obviously no “reviews” in ESTC (or that would be obvious if you knew what it was; one would think you would know what it is before you set to arrogantly dismissing a question about it). And what the h*ll is “company scope” and what the h*ll does it have to do with ESTC or resources like it? ESTC isn’t published by a company; it was came from a national library collaborative.
So your very claim about the “problems” you have with bibliography only shows – once again – that you don’t know what the f*ck you are talking about.

I have no idea who the he!! you really are, and I don’t care. I do know this – you have an attitude and display a level of arrogance that is unwarranted.
If you really are smarter than everyone else, why do you choose some anonymous blog comments to display it? It seems like to me if you’re so f***ing brilliant you should be out making money or working in an intellectually rewarding job or living some other fulfilling life than sitting around complaining on some LJ blog.

Lose the ‘tude dumba$$. At least know what you’re talking about before you spout off.

On a final note, Mr. Kat: Surely there is something in this vast universe you are too stupid to figure out. So cut why don’t you try cutting others some slack?

My problem with any bibliography collection is reviewer bias, coupled with company scope, further coupled with the amount of the bibliographic universe that the editor could cram in the edition, and finally finished off by the year the volume was published.

You keep bringing up these rare Obscure questions only a Librarian could come up with – OR someone who has become used to having a Librarian do their work for them [the very definition of welfare!!!].

I have no sympathy for Noob People [people too dumb to figure things out for themselves] because as I see it, they are Noobs because nobody every challenged them to find the answer ont heir own when they were younger. As a result, now that they are adults, they are helpless and powerless to do work for themselves.

I was checking resource citations the three years before I went and got an MLS. All it takes to become fluent in the informaiton resources on a topic is an investment of time in the subject matter. There are no shortcuts to competency and expert positions on the subject matter. If Ph.Ds are coming in asking for this information, I have to question the calibre of their degree of study.

The people who configure budgets have figured it out…the library is just enabling the rest of the unversity to slack off – SO CUT THEIR BUDGET!!!