As a popular science writer covering a wide range of subjects, I spend a lot of time researching my current hot topic. In the last couple of years I’ve made a significant change to the way I do part of it.
This is thanks to the internet – but it’s nothing to do with internet research. I do use the internet for research, whether it’s digging out papers and articles or finding academics to pester, but a lot of my sources are books. In the old days, I would either trek off to Oxford or London for a suitable library, or I would order from the local library by inter-library loan. This is less expensive in time and money, but can take several weeks before they arrive.
Now I hardly ever use libraries. Instead I buy the books I want from Amazon (usually Marketplace) or Abebooks. As an author, I suppose I should frown at buying secondhand books, but with this kind of book it makes a big difference to the cost.
When I’ve finished with it, I sell the book to someone else. The outcome is a relatively small expenditure, comparable with the cost of an inter-library loan (two trips to Swindon, 2 x parking charges and a fee that can be several pounds), yet the process is much more convenient and I get the book much quicker.
Occasionally the only copies I can find are around £200, so then I do still resort to ILL or the copyright libraries, but in most circumstances my Research Library 2.0 does a better, cheaper, quicker job.
I think you have the right idea, Brian—especially as the internet is not always as reliable as one should like as a source of bona-fide information, as opposed to urban myth, gossip and entertainment—especially about contentious issues in science.
Sometimes, though, the information you need has to come from books, because it’s too obscure and ancient to be found any other way. When I was researching Jacob’s Ladder, which is (in part) a history of our ideas about embryology, I had to buy one or two secondhand books from specialist booksellers (Materials for the Study of Variation by William Bateson, 1894, a snip at £90) but I relied a great deal on the library of the Linnean Society of London – not only crammed full with the ancient grimoires I needed, but with a fantastic librarian who knew the subject, knew her stock, and recommended a lot of useful texts I’d never heard of but which proved invaluable.
Trouble is, I’m scared of librarians. Don’t they bite?
Only if they’re Conan the Librarian.
Isn’t that Arnold Schwarzenneger (well, how do you spell it) with glasses and a cardigan?
(Yes, Pratchett fans, I know, I know.)
Or is that the sort of stereotyping that puts you on Maxine’s ‘first against the wall come the revolution’ list. (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference – aren’t we cultural?)