Falcon's Gate, the SCA group at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point invited me to talk with them about persona development. The building at the university has electricity, so instead of lugging 30 books, I took my projector and showed pictures of the books and tools that I find useful for such research. I locked the doors so I could let my "heavy-handed teacher" persona push my research mantras: 1. Ask the right question and ask the question right; and 2. Write down where you got the information.
I wish I could say that I recite these mantras when I'm in the library doing the work. Usually I think about them when I reeeeally need to know where I got some little tidbit of information. Pulling this class together made me realize that a class on evaluating sources might be very useful. If I had a nickel for every rehashing of the old "medieval cooks used spices to hide the taste of bad meat" myth I could afford to take the time off work to develop such a class.
This class was just for UWSP folks. I put UWSP library call numbers on the bibliography, for heaven's sake. I also demonstrated WorldCat, which made that task simple. In a couple weeks I'll revise it for folks in the Twin Cities.
Fear not! I also made a big pitch (with the aid of Emelye and Amra) for the A&S 50 Challenge. What I could have done in the 13th century if I'd had a projector connected to the Internet!
