Rain_Sparrow's Nest

So what is the method to my madness?

The way I am creating this site is pretty much the way I have always written research papers: bibliography first.

Why do I do this? Well, the first step when you are researching something is to find resources and explore them, right? That, in my book, is the time to make a record of them so you can remember what you found where.

So, as soon as I find a resource, I create a bibliographic entry if it is a text or otherwise offline resource, and create a link if it is an online resource.

OK, that tells me what resources I found, but not what I found in them, whether they were any good, etc. This is all important stuff. Even if the resource stinks, I want to know that, so when someone says, "Oh, but have you checked out ..." I can know that yes I did, and didn't find it very helpful, and here's why.

So I don't just create a bibliography, I create an annotated bibliography. Well, that's what I do for research papers. Here, I've decided it makes more sense to have a plain old bibliography so that people can just scan over it if they want, and then link the entries to the annotations/book reviews/commentaries. That way, if you want the notes, you can get them, if you'd rather not be biased by my opinions, you can skip them. Or if you just want to browse through random commentaries, you can do that, too.

Organizing a bibliography is pretty easy, there are rules: alphabetical by author or editor. When it gets out of control, create categories, and then organize the entries by author or editor.

The book reviews are happening a little more randomly. They get done when I've finished reading the book, and I don't tend to read in alphabetical order. At the moment, the most recently written reviews are at the top of the page. Eventually I'll devise a more sane system of categories and then probably put them in alphabetical order by title within those categories.

The links in the Online Resources section are starting to get organized. The first few categories are in the order I will probably keep them: Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, and Abenaki. Eventually I'll alphabetize the rest, but right now I'm just trying to figure out what categories I have 2 or 3 of, pull them out of the list, and give them a category, on a more or less first found first created basis.

So this is how this site is more-or-less-kind-of-sort-of organized. I hope that helps as you navigate it.

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