Getting Started on Deaf Research: Part 3

Argh ...

It's a unique sort of book that can simultaneously frustrate you beyond all belief and draw you in even deeper. Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is one of those books, and it's driving me nuts at the moment.

On the surface, it's a deeply complicated book -- at least four major plots (one of which includes you. Yes, you, the poor soul reading it), the beginnings of ten engrossing novels, and at least one secret society out to steal the source of all stories. Throughout it all, Calvino meditates on the nature of literature, the act of reading, and the way both interact within the reader's mind.

Below the surface, it's irritating. Each of the ten novels in the book starts off a little slowly, then builds up terrifically well all the way to a particularly suspenseful point -- and then is chopped off. Of course, all of this is in service to the overall plot, which centers around two readers who are having the same problem you are: Getting suckered into a particularly good book only to have it cut off at a particularly critical moment for one reason or another. Gah.

I'm sure by the book's end, I'll rave about it, but at the moment, I just want to know what happens next.

Okay, moving on. First, I'd like to announce that it's once again time for our Undergraduate Research Paper Award. If you're an undergrad who's written what you feel is an especially good research paper at any point since the beginning of Spring 2009, send it to us. If you win, you get a $200 Barnes & Noble gift card, which is a prize I'd envy under any circumstance. You can find more details, including our submission criteria and instructions, here. If you're a faculty member reading this, by all means, please feel free to encourage the authors of the best papers you've seen to submit their work!

Now, let's get back on track with deaf research. I believe we left off with our pathfinders, a list of which you can find here.

The pathfinders are intended to be quick stops for people who are researching fairly common topics, such as cochlear implants, deaf authors, and interpreting. One thing to bear in mind about those pathfinders -- and this one thing is mentioned in most of them -- is that they don't often list the titles we have in those topics. They're intended to give you suggestions and methods for performing the research yourself. It sounds funny, but that's one of the most important things we try to do here at the Library: teach our students how to perform effective research on their own. It's an important skill to have, and these pathfinders are designed to encourage its development.

They're all laid out in a fairly standard format for most of the pathfinders (exceptions are discussed a little further down):

• Scope
• This discusses exactly what the pathfinder covers. This generally includes a more specific definition of the topic covered (What exactly is covered in the term "Deaf culture?" How exactly does a cochlear implant work?) and gives you a better idea of what sort of information the pathfinder can help you dig up.
  
• Introduction
  
• Lists resources that offer introductions to the topic. For example, in the pathfinder about cochlear implants, this section details various texts that may offer useful introductions to cochlear implants and their importance in the deaf community, and points to the websites of some manufacturers.
  
• Books
• Again, we don't often list specific items. If we were to try to offer a listing of specific books, we'd spend quite a bit of time adding new books as they come in. It would also not be a very good fit for the purpose of the pathfinder, which is, again, intended to guide you along your own course of research. Instead, we offer suggested search terms and instructions on how to access the catalog.
  
• Periodicals
• Similar to the "Books" section. We also include a discussion of how to approach searching for deaf-related topics in non-deaf-related periodicals; many deaf-related issues are covered in journals that don't have the word "deaf" or "sign" in the title.
  
• Online Databases/Newspapers/Other Resources
• A particular pathfinder may have anywhere from one to all three of these sections. We generally include suggestions for the best places to look and search terms that will work best in finding what you need.

That's more or less standard, with some variation to accommodate films and microforms. Very few pathfinders don't follow this format; those non-standard pathfinders are concerned mostly with Gallaudet's more unique holdings, like our deaf school yearbooks, which aren't available online. Our yearbooks pathfinder, for example, describes how to search for a specific school's yearbook in our catalog.

In general, the pathfinders are terrific sources for step-by-step help in looking up some of the more common deaf-related topics. If you're looking for something that isn't covered by the pathfinders, you always have at least one more thing you can do: ask a librarian!

That takes care of this week. I'm out of town for the Academic Bowl again next week, so you can expect a shorter post a lá last week's. Enjoy the emerging grass and blue skies! After this week's 30-mile-per-hour winds, of course.

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Question of the Week
When are we getting more new books?
We're getting them right now. Carts have been arriving at least once a week for the past few weeks. I'll write up a post about our new books sometime soon!

Three feet of snow: now what?

Phew.

All this snow. It makes me wonder why I left Rochester at all. Of course, I spent a couple of years in Florida after I graduated from RIT, so that makes sense -- except now, of course, I find myself up here, buried under three feet of snow.

As I'm sure you may have noticed, the recent snowstorms have thrown off the blog schedule a little bit. Add on to that my work with the Academic Bowl, and you've got a strange schedule simmering away. This week gets a Wednesday post, since I'm in Utah starting Thursday, but next week will get a post on Friday.

Since things have gone a little askew, I'm going to put the remainder of the Deaf Research Help series on hold until next week; we're all still playing catch-up after a week off, and it's beyond me to try and focus on such involved stuff at the moment while I've got a few other things going.

Instead, we'll do a quick post, starting with a book review and then an update on the Library in the wake of last week's snowstorms. Sort of a half-post for a half-week.

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I actually checked this book out for a re-read after hearing about Salinger's death a few weeks ago; it's one of my favorite books. It's basically the story of the Glass family, which consists of a pair of parents and a whole passel of overachieving kids who sequentially rose to fame on a radio show by being on a panel of smart-aleck children who answer questions posed to them by callers. Of course, by the time in which the novel is set, the kids have all grown up, complete with a war death (the Second World War) and a suicide; the surviving Glasses are left to cope with the attendant psychological problems that arise when child geniuses grow up.

Specifically, the two youngest Glass kids, now in their twenties, are the main characters in the book. Franny's the baby -- and beauty -- of the family, who's just experienced a nervous breakdown for reasons not fully explained in the novel (although they are very strongly implied), while Zooey is her older brother, a good-looking aspiring actor with a major chip on his shoulder. The majority of the novel concerns a long conversation between the two as Franny convalesces on their mother's couch about the frustration they experience while approaching a world that is often more senseless than they expect it to be. Really, both Franny and Zooey are more thoughtful versions of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye; they're more likely to attempt to come to terms with the world as it is, rather than hold a grudge against it for its refusal to conform to their standards.

It's a fantastic book and, if I may be so bold, superior to Catcher in the Rye in many ways.

Now: What happened to the Library in the middle of all that snow?

Believe it or not, while Gallaudet as a whole was closed, we stayed open! This is because our student assistants, most of whom live on campus, went way above and beyond; they came in, they opened the building, they checked out books and movies, checked them in, and generally held the fort and offered our most basic services until we librarians could come back to campus. Major kudos to them!

However, for one reason or another, people may have gotten e-mails saying their items were overdue during last week, but were unable to make it onto campus because of unplowed roads, buried cars, or just plain old snow-laden ennui (maybe not that last one). This is kind of annoying, because folks who checked out any movies on the first day of the first storm, Feb. 4, were unable to come in on or before Feb. 7 to return their movies. Then, after a couple days of digging out, the next storm hit!

Don't worry, though: We're waiving any fines for items that you couldn't drop off last week because of the weather! If you've still got any of those, bring them in this week and you'll get off scot-free. This only applies to items that were due on or after Feb. 4 and before Feb. 14.

Aside from that, as I said, we're all playing catch-up, along with the rest of Gallaudet, but we're definitely open for business.

That's all for this week. Next week: Deaf research pathfinders!