Post #4648083 · Elektrine

2026-08-31 13:58 UTC

How would you choose which book to get on middle-saharan 17th century tribes anyway? You can’t know about everything. You’d just have to ask a bunch of experts in the field, right? Edit: Everyone chill, I wasn’t dissing the previous comment, I was just curious. I know that running a library needs a degree. But I didn’t know the responsibility of expanding collection fell on the one maintaining the library (excluding requests from users). I thought maybe they at most subscribe to a list of award winners or top cited books or something.

Replies (2)

@mandolrain@lemmy.world 2026-08-31 14:13

Research skills that you acquire during your master’s (incl. but not limited to, talking to other experts)

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@Agent641@lemmy.world 2026-08-31 15:53

Sure, you can ask 10 experts, and get 11 opinions. Researching books, authors, subjects, and determining which ones are appropriate and which ones aren’t is complex stuff. You would, for example, research the authors prior publishing history of books and journal articles, read peer reviews of their articles, check their references, research the history of the authors of their references ECT to build an idea of what sort of author you’re dealing with. Do they know their stuff, or are they just a book mill? Is any of the subject matter contradictory, controversial, out of date, or incomplete. Repeat for 30 books on the same subject to find the most comprehensive work for your collection.

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