Keep Going

This week in Fellowship research, I continued looking at late Victorian sources. I identified a cataloguing glitch – as a librarian/researcher, I’m consistently and annoyingly good at this – and borrowed another armload of library books. But did I make any outstanding discoveries? Not really.

It’s probably a bit like being an archaeologist – you have to sift through a lot of ‘stuff’ to find a precious relic, and sometimes there is nothing to find. But you keep on sifting! Actually, I think I have it better than an archaeologist, because I know I’m looking at the right kind of material, and the more I examine, the more chances of seeing patterns.

In any case, it would be inaccurate to say I discovered nothing. Looking at more publications by one individual enabled me to confirm how enlightened his approach was, compared to another author. This is the latter one:-

It also gave me another idea which I need to pursue, both in my historical research and in thinking about library acquisitions ‘at home’.

And additionally, researching in St Andrews gives me access to mainstream materials that we just don’t have in our specialist Conservatoire library. That’s invaluable!

But back to my original heading:-

• When you think you’re getting nowhere, but you know you’re on the right track – keep going.
• If you’re detecting patterns – keep looking.
• If you have the tiniest idea about a new research question, write it down.

Did anyone ever make a breakthrough discovery in less than a month of looking? Probably. Maybe they were a genius, or maybe they were lucky with what they found. Maybe they knew exactly where to look. But there’s a lot to recommend the hard slog, too. After all, it would be tragic to be so close to a result, and not to achieve it. And I should know. I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t finish my first doctoral studies. This definitely proved to be a life lesson – I had realised how important it was to persevere, and how unsatisfactory it was to feel that you had left unfinished work and had nothing to show for it! My second thesis did get submitted – on time, to the day. So, more recently, did my second book. I like to think that persistence is one of my better characteristics!

Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay