Digital Paper: A Manual for Research and Writing with Library and Internet Materials (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

As a current graduate student, there is quite a bit of mystery in terms of what constitutes a 'successful' academic paper. Often, at least, in my experience professors assume the process of research, writing and editing to have been mastered by us.This book fills in any gaps in knowledge a student (particularly at the graduate level) might have in pursuing their research. There are some questions that seem almost too obvious to ask and this book helps you answer them. In the book, Abbott takes his reader through each stage of the research process and provides explanations for things that are perfunctory but lacking any rationale (for example, you'll learn the purpose of an annotated bibliography!).Abbott's thoughtful and lucidly written work has greatly helped me with my research process, and I expect to continuously refer to it as I ​progress towards my dissertation.I highly recommend this student to any student in the social sciences or humanities. It is clearly written and does not dumb down information while simultaneously being highly informative.

This is the kind of book that will make even older academics say, “I dearly wish I’d had this when I was a grad student myself.” It should be required reading for all academic researchers, especially those doing work on thesis- or dissertation- or book-length projects. It is written by a sociologist who draws on a great deal of personal research experience himself, as well as on his position of having guided the work of many graduate students, of whom he writes, “they asked the questions that made me realize what I was failing to teach.” This guide is one of the strongest antidotes available to the naïve notion that “one stop shopping” on the Internet or in a few subscription databases is adequate for real scholarship. In Abbott’s own words, “my computational experience gives me an insider’s view of digital knowledge tools, and my skepticism about them—of which more below—is based not on simple conservatism but on having extensively used such tools.” The author’s hands-on experience is evident throughout the book from the many examples he gives. Particularly refreshing—and valuable—is his emphasis on the importance of the serious reading of actual books. “You cannot do serious research entirely by scanning, skimming, extracting, or other forms of surface engagement.” Equally important is his discussion of browsing in book stacks as in important component of research—an art and a skill that is nowadays too often entirely overlooked by those who think that specifying keywords in a blank search box is generally all that is needed to retrieve whatever one is searching for. In Abbott’s words, “Since keyword tools produce immense lists most of whose entries are useless, those who develop them have created sorting mechanisms to bring the useful material to the top. Most of these ‘relevance’ sortings are themselves useless”; and “search engine rankings are not reliable guides to quality.” Any students who have relied on Google searching to the neglect of more powerful and more focused sources will breathe an “Amen,” time after time, in reading this book—all the more often if the only “information literacy” instruction they’ve received in their classes has consisted of talks on “how to think critically about the web sites you’ve found,” as if finding web sites alone were all that is necessary, as long as you “think critically” about them. Abbott is particularly good in laying out what is needed in the design of research projects, paying particular attention to the methods of efficiently creating and managing files that allow for changes in the project’s goals as new information is discovered. This, too, is something that gets swept under the rug in too many conventional information literacy classes: the awareness, even the inevitability, that the direction of one’s project may itself change radically as new information is discovered through various stages of inquiry—stages that extend well beyond the initial “one stop shopping” that is held up as the ultimate goal by many librarians who lack Abbott’s practical experience and downright “savvy.” Abbott is also especially insightful in his recommendations concerning how to read and evaluate sources—his advice reminds me in some ways of Mortimer Adler’s and Charles Van Doren’s _How to Read a Book_, a classic that itself ought to be more widely read. In short, if you are an academic: read this book, no matter where you are in your career; but if you’re just starting out, read it twice.

He has some good points. I like the idea of mini-analysis into the research work. In other place, he goes into unnecessary trivial details. Some of the arguments agains the Search; and, in favor or the hand-based indexing are sound to some extent. But, he repeats them too much; and, underplays the power of search to a large extent.It is mostly geared towards the library work for social scientists. It might be helpful for those in the social fields. My research is in humanities. The strategies are generally fairly applicable to my field too. But, in general, I don't think any one would miss that much if he/she skipped this book. Most parts of the books are just commonsense advise on how to do library search.

The book is a bit chaotic. The title is misleading: it is not about digital materials per se, but rather about uses of library in general, be it a physical library or a digital one. However, I would still recommend it to those interested in the topic.

A small proportion of books repay multiple readings. If you are a young scholar working on a large research project, this is one of them. I read it first while searching around for a dissertation topic. I read it a second time in the early phase of actually writing the dissertation. The book was incredibly rich with useful practical advice on both readings, but different portions of it have struck me as particularly important depending on the problems I was grappling with at any moment. Your own research design will not end up modeling Abbott's in all details, but that's not the goal of the book. The goal is to help you conceptualize library research as a skill, which can be learned and honed, without giving up all the serendipitous benefits that come from browsing, talking random walks, reconceptualizing your question and so on. It succeeds brilliantly at that -- it will make you a more successful and a more efficient library researcher.

Completely impractical: chapters are discursive and written from a personal point of view. There is no bibliography and no URL references. A sample should suffice: "A library research project is complicated. Moreover, it is only one part of your already complicated life" (p. 156).

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