Explore the library!!

One of the things I most enjoyed while being a graduate student was exploring a range of books and journals in the library. This was sometimes on purpose or most of the times by accident—or boredom. Sometimes I would look for old or oldest issues of journals in my field. Other times looked up very different subjects, or literally searched randomly to find something unexpected. And while looking for articles needed for my work, I ran into other journals and nearby subjects in the stacks. Sometimes I really got off on a tangent and spent an hour or two in those other subjects. I suppose my advisor might have thought it was a waste of time but probably not. I think Dr. White would have appreciated such curiosity.

Why do I think it worthwhile? I appreciate learning more than my narrow area of academic research and teaching. It can put my learning into context with other subjects and the wider “world” of science, technology, people and art. Were there journals and searches that were a waste of time? Of course, but I wouldn’t have found those other very useful and fascinating tidbits like Barbara McClintock’s original papers, realizing that eugenics was in fact an active field of study as illustrated by journal articles, and what early teaching in agriculture looked like, among many other topics. I got lost one day when I ran across a large cabinet of old glass slides in the basement of the Horticulture building at Iowa State.

I do hope students continue to do this sort of random or accidental discovery today—and faculty too. The electronic systems we search and look through today are very efficient and so useful—much better than the search resources we had back then. I’m glad for them. But how does one make such accidental findings today?

So if you are a graduate student reaching this, I give you permission to explore those dusty old stacks of journals, calling up random books from the automated retrieval systems in the library, and the foundational works in your and others’ disciplines. And those that are just plain fun. It will create some great conversational pieces to amaze your friends, may help you learn the history of your area of study, and likely shape your current work for the better!