Friday, November 20, 2009

Hi, My Name is Mark, and I'm Internet-Dependent

What I love most about Google is not that I can, if asked, find pictures of the neighborhood where I lived briefly in Berkeley, Ca, but rather if I stray into the more powerful tools like Google books and Google scholar, I'll find all sorts of useful information tucked away in books and papers I would have never otherwise thought to peruse.

One of the best examples of this is my current Golden Age Boxer project. A quick Google of "Sailor Tom Sharkey" gives me nothing to work with that I don't already have (and may I just say, a pox on those websites who just glom onto other sources and present the same info over and over again ad nauseum). But if I type that name into Google Books, I start finding mentions of him in old, very out-of-print memoires of then-famous referees, or write-ups in collections of one sports writer's columns. I have found this type of information to be invaluable, since it was usually written during Sharkey's lifetime, and even as anecdote, it's a measure of how he was seen in society. Very, very cool.

No comments:

Post a Comment