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When I was a green young researacher in grad school, my instincts for lit searches were terrible. I'd look up 100 papers or 10 books before I found a single average-value idea I could use. Now I'm much better. Example from just now...
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I had this vague instinct that there was something about Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll's thinking in general that was relevant to my current thinking about time. So I checked out a random collection of Carroll expert essays on Alice edited by Howard Bloom.
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From the Intro by Bloom, paydirt: "Wonderland has only one reality principle, which is that time has been murdered. Nothing need be substituted for time, even though only madness can murder time." ... the entire essay is exactly the take I needed. Lit survey smart targeting.
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Not sure quite how to formalize how I navigate literature, but I think my hit rate now is closer to 50% than the 1% it used to be.
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One reason I'm much better now is of course not skill at all, but leaving academia. I can ignore the whole "cover your ass/pay tribute" category of citations and only go looking for what I actually need to make my own arguments easier/better. Publish or perish = bad lit search.
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