Instructions for Class on Friday: aka The Bibliography Challenge!

The Bibliography Challenge!

When I was an undergraduate, one of my classes had this super evil library scavenger hunt. It was full of psychotic questions like, “The following quote [insert random bizarre quote] is a line from a book. Find it.” This was before the internet and there were 100 questions like this.

Me and my group were working, like, 8 hours a day every day for two weeks. We were so mad about that stupid assignment and the awfulness, etc. And we were having trouble. So we started to get desperate. To try desperate things. For example, we narrowed one question down to four books. But we couldn’t find the answer in any of them. So we called the authors. All stalker-like, we got their phone numbers and friggin called them at home and read them the quote and asked them if they wrote the book that had the quote and if so, which book was it in? We talked to professors. We broke into email accounts. We pretended to be research assistants for professors that didn’t exist and got librarians to find stuff for us. We were like Veronica Mars, but with more rage.

Well, I wrote nasty things about that horribly hard assignment on the course evaluations. It was the worst assignment EVER, I concluded.

Fast forward a few years and I was in grad school, doing a research project. Everyone in the class was having trouble finding stuff, but I wasn’t. They all asked me how I was finding stuff. So I told them. They looked at me like I was crazy. And it hit me: everything I knew about doing research, I learned from that one awful assignment. Everything.

In addition to the stalking of authors, one of the most helpful things I learned is that bibliographies are fantastic ways to find sources. Instead of pouring over databases, grab books on topics slightly larger than your topic and turn directly to the bibliographies. Don’t even read the books. Just read the bibliographies. You’ll be amazed how much easier it is when someone else has done the research for you. Something I commonly do is to go to the library, find 20 books, pile them on a table and pour through the bibliographies. (Let someone else put the books away.) So useful.

So, here are the rules of the challenge:

1) Work in groups

2) You have only the class period. Fifty minutes. After that, time is up.

3) Start with one person’s topic and then work your way through everyone else’s topic. Get through as many people as you can, but don’t exceed the time limit. Rock paper scissors to see who goes in what order if you can't decide.

4) For each topic, find 20 books written on a broader topic. Don’t open the books yet.

5) Once you have 20 books, put them on a table and flip directly to the bibliographies.

6) Write down any journal articles that apply to each person's smaller topic from each bibliography.

7) When you’ve gotten through the 20 bibliographies, it’s time to move to the next person in the group.

8) Repeat for each person until the time limit is up.

9) Bring your lists of articles to class on Monday. The group with the most articles wins a prize.

If you have questions while you're working, send me an email. I'll try to keep my computer next to me the whole time. Good luck, y'all!