Go Look It Up.

Part 1: A lifetime of (re)searching...

“Go Look It Up” was the closest thing we had to a mantra in our ‘60s academic family. Unabridged dictionaries (Webster’s 3rd and then the Oxford) were the closest thing to sacred texts. Collections of proverbs, slang, or quotations were acceptable, but encyclopedias were frowned upon because they weren’t “original source material.”

I was given my first serious research project in the eighth grade. The assignment was to choose a topic in American history and write about it. My friends all picked reasonable subjects: the Declaration of Independence, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Great Depression, etc. I made the mistake of asking my father what he thought a good topic would be.

He suggested Section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act.

This isn’t quite as strange as it sounds. Almost, but not quite. My godfather Larry Spitz was literally a kind of a god to me and he spent his whole life in the labor movement. Larry began his career in the late ‘30s organizing textile workers and trade unions in Rhode Island. Then he worked for the Steelworkers in Pittsburgh for many years. After he retired, he started organizing retired union members in Sun City, Arizona. As long as they were Democrats.

Allegedly, he even organized the Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket ferry workers during one summer vacation.

Section 14b of the Taft Hartley Act is also known as the “Right to Work” bill. Actually, it’s the right to get all the benefits of union negotiations without paying union dues. But enough history…and politics.

The day after I received the assignment, I went to the university library where I had some kind of “faculty brat” browsing privileges, and walked with feigned grown-up confidence directly to the iconic wooden card cases with those fabulous curved finger pulls on the drawers. I soon found a card for a book on the history of labor in America, did a deep dive into the stacks, took it back to a “carrel,”^⁠¹ sat down, and began to read. From time to time, I’d refer to the footnotes to see where I might find additional information. (Yeah, I know, I was so much older then…or just insufferably precocious.)

When I got home at the end of the day, my dad asked how my research had gone. I told him pretty well except there was one book I couldn’t find that seemed to have everything I needed to know about labor law.

“What was that?” he asked, curiously.

“Ibid.”^⁠² I responded seriously.

I’ve been searching my whole life for the facts I need to write things for other people so I can get paid (or a college degree).

By high school, I had developed pretty good radar for finding and then underlining, highlighting, bookmarking, and/or sticky noting^⁠³ as many critical facts as I could—while reading as little as possible in as few books as possible. Then, I’d sit down at my Smith Corona, and stitch those facts and figures together more or less coherently, until I had a paper ready to hand in the next morning.

Once or twice in college, when I was really late with a paper or stuck figuring out what to write, I’d read all my highlighted passages after dinner, proceed to take some dangerous drug, and, the next day, speed-write five or ten pages that featured ideas and connections the professors found intriguing and A-worthy although somewhat suspicious. (They didn’t want to admit they had no idea what I was talking about because, on the surface, it seemed so insightful.)

There are a whole lot of caveats I should add to the above, but why? It’s a true story.

There are also a whole lot of warnings I should add. They’re also true. (Read my book on major depression if you’re not sure why…)

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I try really hard not to say: “When I was your age…” The implicit message is that things were better back then—which is dismissive, delusional, and a conversational buzzkill.

I’d rather say, if I were your age, I might understand things like blockchains, TikTok, and why I’d want to experiment with virtual reality when I’m still trying to deal with this one.^⁠⁴

But I admit I am tempted to say, “When I was your age, you had to go to a library to do serious searching.”

At our library these days, you can borrow snowshoes, bike tools, and gardening tools; get free vegetable seeds and Covid tests; check your email if you don’t have a computer, or take temporary daytime shelter if you don’t have a home. But you can also still immerse yourself in a magical world of information, imagination, and entertainment replete with books, periodicals, journals, CDs, DVDs, and other media.

In spite of all that, if you want to find a fact, it’s a whole lot quicker to stay home and look online, which may now include the option of surrendering to the allure of artificial intelligence.

I, like many, self-respecting writers will soon have to take a deep breath and write an essay about artificial intelligence that says, in so many words, “You can’t scare me!” But first I wanted to explain briefly why libraries are still special places to go for research.

The problem was that, after thinking about it for a while, I couldn’t come up with any very good answers. So, as kind of a joke (on myself, as it turned out) I decided to ask ChatGPT, that repository of allegedly all human knowledge (before 2021). It replied with admirable modesty:⁵

Ultimately, while ChatGPT can provide quick access to information and answer specific questions, libraries offer a broader range of resources, deeper research capabilities, human expertise, and a unique physical and immersive experience.⁠

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Coming soon:

Part 2: How and Why to Volunteer to Shelve Library Books When You’re Really Depressed.

Part 3: How Writers Can Think About ChatGPT without Taking Anti-Anxiety Medication.

1. A “carrel” is a library table with partitions to keep you from getting totally distracted by the person next to you. Especially if the person is a 13-year-old who has no idea what he’s doing.

2. Either you don’t know what “ibid.” means or you’ve done so much research you can’t believe I’m defining it: “from the same source.” So, for example, if your footnote is Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 225. The next one could be Ibid., 266. You should probably include the edition and translation, etc. but let’s not go there. Note: it always has a period.

3. A little poetic license. Post-it® Notes weren’t invented until around 1977, a few years after I graduated.

4. OpenAI, "ChatGPT." Accessed on May 24, 2023. https://chat.openai.com. “What technology does the older generation find hardest to understand?”

5. Ibid. “What can you do at a library that you can't do on Chat GPT?”