So, after years of helping people find literature for the Sciences (particularly the Medical Sciences), I'm now trying to use my skills to find literature for Literature...
Back when I was studying Literature the first time, I didn't really know indexes from Adam. I just found a likely journal and went flicking through until I came across something useful. Not very efficient, but people who don't know the first thing about information literacy rarely are very efficient.
Now I'm using all sorts of databases, federated search engines and what-not to try to track down some stuff on Brecht for use in a rather short assignment. Problem is, most articles written about the B-man were written quite some time ago. As in, somewhere between 20-40 years ago.
Now, I tell all of the students who come to our training sessions that the majority of their sources should be less than six years old. This is all well and good, if people have been publishing about your topic in the last half-decade.
It doesn't look like many people have been writing about Brecht recently at all. At least, not in relation to the play I'm discussing. I have to keep reminding myself that this is Literature, not Science, and things written 30 years ago are not, by virtue of their age, dangerously wrong or out of date.
I also have to wonder: Why has Brecht gone out of favour? Is it him? His plays? Communist writings in general?
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