If Willy Wonka ever needed some music
periodicals he could have phrased it like “ periodicals, periodicals, who’s got
some music peridoicals”? The answer of course would be the library or other
online databases. But what are periodicals? Let alone music periodicals?
Luckily John Wagstaff gives a great blurb about it. But for sake of kindled
hearts towards knowing the unknown, I will break it down. Periodicals simply
mean a publication that appears at generally and ideally regular intervals.
While they a growing number of them are moving towards the e-friendly
electronic age, most are usually printed. If the world periodicals have you
down, you are welcome to exchange the word for journals or even magazines. But how is this useful? I asked myself the
same question! Social commentators use periodicals to provide a mass of information
regarding news, reviews and addition topics about understanding the music of
their time. Over the years we have amassed such an archive that utilizing this
resource should always be on the mind of any researcher a.k.a “us”.
Rob Weir
sees this mass of data and brings us helpful tips to navigate this. Strategy is
key to assessing a professional article and being able to extract it true
usefulness. One should always be wary of a paper that does not use examples or
cites any claim they make. As well, one should critically think about their
examples for if their augment is weak then citing them, as a source might not
be helpful to anyone. But what if I don’t have time to read the whole article?
Western
library has a lovely video to give you a plan of attack when skimming an
article. A great way to read an article
to assess its meaning and purpose is to start with the Abstract and move to the
conclusion and then back to the intro. This was the best advice I’ve heard in a
long time. I was happy to have a strategy that would help me find useful
sources then having to read some horrible and useless articles that I would run
into during my research.
Kristin
Antelman’s research into how we access articles was quite a unique topic
choice. While I’m very much for e-print, or just anything and everything online
all the time, access to this field had never really been a question of mine.
What does allowing open access verse close access really mean for the work.
While I’ve never been one to think that I can’t find something… Somewhere,
because the glorious Internet has all. Open-access will only allow our
collective research to amasses a truer meaning of the world in which of field
resides. Hopefully more people adopt this, so that our ability to search and
acquirer information and become more streamlined.
Which gets us to the last reading,
Jeffrey Beall talks about a nasty topic. Predatory publishers, people who wish
to charge extra when allowing open-access publishing. It’s like a horrible
parasitical relationship, where these people attack like vultures towards
scholarly pursues. Biggest issue with
this is that publishers use to have a role in the validation of the research,
but now so many articles are overlooked and or just published for the sake of
more money. What a lovely time it is to be alive. Gina Kolata continues this
love with discussing the pseudo-academia world that open-access has made. This
makes research particularly difficult for non-experts in a field. Which only
comforts my nightmares of doing my research project but luckily I’ve been
taught a variety of ways to filter junk. I really liked how Kolata referred the
publication game as the Wild West, because after these readings, I’m slightly
horrified on the lengths people will go for money. That being said, I’m also
not surprised.
I found these reading dark and
surprisingly helpful. While not as comforting as other weeks, it has given me a
lot to think about when it comes to my navigation for sources and the
creditability of the ideas purposed.
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