SearchResearch Challenge (6/26/24): How to find the best learning resources in a crowded field?
Dan Russell
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
I'm not fixated on pyramids, really.
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| Pyramid of Giza. P/C Jeremy Bishop, Unsplash |
... despite having two weeks of SRS images featuring pyramids.
But I am focused on the larger SearchResearch question of how to organize your own research. As you know, the job market is changing rapidly. The Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the average tenure in a job (in the US) is 4.1 years. This means that an essential skill is that of being an autodidact, that is, someone who knows how to educate themselves on a given topic. We know how fast the technology landscape is changing. One of the most important skills of the 2000's is going to be how to come up to speed on a topic rapidly... and accurately, with attention to understanding the breadth of a topic area.
So for this week, I'm thinking about Ancient Egypt as a topic area.
Suppose, just suppose, someone in your household gets an interest in learning about ancient Egypt. It won't take you long to learn that there's an entire scholarly discipline on the subject.
A quick look at the catalog of the Library of Congress shows more than 10,000 hits on the subject of Egypt. Even just a simple search of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) gives us 899 hits... on just the headings!
Learning how to understand ancient Egypt and learning the depth and breadth of Egyptology as a field is a big task. Of course, it leads to a common Research Challenge about how to tackle such a big topic.
1. How would you organize a plan to learn about Ancient Egypt? What kinds of searches would you do to get to the heart of a big, well-established topic like this? What kinds of things should one think about when starting on such a project?
Please do NOT say, "just ask ChatGPT"--or if you do, then tell us how to validate what the LLMs tell you. Can you use them for decent self-educational advice, or will you fall down the deep shafts in the pyramid of Giza and come out talking about ancient astronauts?
Let us know what you think... and how YOU would proceed!
Keep Searching!
