• It’s not all about running, just mostly •
[2 MIN READ]
As effective an information specialist as I think I am, I do find myself falling short sometimes. F’rinstance, a bunch of years ago, I remember reading an article that was published (I was confident) in the New York Times (that being my favorite source of running writing). This particular one was about the spouses of marathon runners being generally healthier than those who aren’t, even if they themselves didn’t run. Some might see that as exactly the motivation to say something like, “Honey, I need to get more fit: It’s time for you to start marathon training.”
I think about that one particular article regularly, perhaps exactly because I’ve never been able to find it again. One of the disciplines that I’ve established just for moments like this is to log articles of potential interest with all the traditional pieces of information relevant for academic work. The problem is that I never did that with this piece. Sometimes you just think you won’t remember something to want it again. No problem; until you do. In this case, whether searching in the New York Times or doing a general web search or doing a Google Scholar search for the original scholarly source of that newspaper article, I still haven’t been able to find it.
As someone with a master’s of science degree in Library and Information Science, I know the recommended search techniques, but the Worldwide Web is only so compliant. Databases also exist that include the holdings of NYT for exactly this purpose, but they aren’t very useful when you don’t have the credentials to access them.
Today I “missed it by that much” (Maxwell Smart) when I found a secondary source that was clearly referencing the original research article. ‘That much’ because it turned out to be a tertiary source that didn’t use any conventional academic citation style and instead linked out to a secondary source in a fitness magazine whose link was no longer any good. Go WWW.
I’ll keep trying after incubating the next search strategy for a while. I have to. The health of so many spouses is depending upon it.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT
Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (3/25/23 RUN REPORT), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination with minor revision.
Postscript: When Training Fails in a Different Context
Updated: 2023’04’26’W (Postscript)
iCandybyWangC 