Independent Researcher

The world is not set up for independent researchers. First of all, without academic affiliation, it is immediately harder just to get into a library. Thankfully, Glasgow Uni graciously let me in. Some, like Emory will let guests in all the time. I wouldn't like my chances of getting into, say, the Bodlian in my current circumstances.

But, you say, this is the twenty first century; you can do most of your research online! Wrong. Not without a log in to full text articles or even to searchable databases to figure out which articles you need to look at. And no, Google Scholar is no replacement. Believe me, I have, in my desperation, tried.

I'm trying to brush up a paper I wrote a few years ago, then revised into a suedo-conference paper, into an article. To do this I need to find out if anything else has been written on the topic since I first did the research for it (and, in theory, my research skills have improved since then, so it would be good to make sure there wasn't anything earlier that I missed). So far I've found exactly one more article. How? I remembered the name of the author of one of the original articles I used (in itself an extraordinary occurrence, but I could have looked it up in my bibliography if I hadn't remembered his name, but he's sort of a hero of mine since he mostly works on elves). It took me a few tries to spell his name right, but eventually I pulled up his home page through Google. Then, following the link to his article, the page stopped at an add of sorts for the journal it was published in...which listed the table of contents of their most recent edition...which included another article on a similar topic. So, yay!, one more.

Since then, I've done more table of contents skimming but with no further joy. The problem is, I don't so much need an article or two; I need to know that I've addressed everything relevant and there is no way this method is going to be exhaustive. I do, however, have an appointment with a subject library who will help me search some of those exclusive databases though.

I've tried to find some place where an independent researcher can pay for membership to a library/organization etc to get access to such subscriptions, but I haven't found anything yet. My next tactic will be to ask if the UC alum library card comes with access, but I seem to remember the answer being "no". So like I said, it's hard being an independent researcher these days.