Well, I'm a little bit late, but I think I'll extend our conversation in the class. Probably, I didn't get the topic of the class completely right, but I think it's OK. I'll talk about an important thing in the career of every young scientist, or just student, worker, etc.
To begin with, I should comment that I do find this kind of questions interesting. It's like, you always hear stuff like - "to have deep knowledge you have to read a lot..." But you never ask yourself, if you are doing it (reading) right (btw, it is also very interesting topic, maybe we will talk about it later in the class), or how do you know if your way to find the required information in easiest and, more important, quickest way. So in this post I'll try to answer to myself this question: how I am looking for the information I need?
First thing I realized, it is the great importance of the formulation of the problem you have. You are not looking for random scientific article or book, or article in the Internet. You are looking for the information related to your current study. When I started to work with articles I was completely lost. So many articles I will never be able to read... But then I realized that I need to read only 10-15 articles, related to my current topic, which is obviously doable. When I´ve read some of them I had more clear idea what I should learn next. I started to formulate my question in very clear way. And generally, when I have question formulated I am opening the book... Of course, it´s just a beginning and I can sometimes get lost, but I think I will find my way every time faster. To sum up, before I look for something I ask myself: what I am looking for?
Another thing is what kind of sources we use to look for the information? I found the references in the articles very useful. Keeping in mind, that we already have an idea of what we are looking for, the process really speeds up. From only a title of the article you can decide if it is worth to look or not. Maybe sometimes you can miss something important, but I think this method pays off. Moreover, I think the articles of other authors are supposed just to give you the ideas, inspire you. I read in the speech of Richard Hamming the reason why some scientists never do something novel or some kind of discovery. According to his speech, it is because the are reading... too much! They know so many things that they are never able to make something new. They are not starting something, because they think they know what the answer is. And the young scientist without experience can do this because his mind is free from the limitations. Sorry for this off-topic.
And for the end of this post, I want to mention the tools I use to find the information I need. Of course it is search engines, like Google, Bing. Also databases like Web of knowledge. Sometimes I can look in the databases of the peer-review Journals. Having the references makes it's much easier to find articles. And I can't imagine my life without tools I mentioned.
Also I would like to mention the reference organizer. It really saves a lot of time. For example in Mendeley, you can save articles you use and then add them to your reference list in just 2 clicks! I remember the times when I was doing it manually, it was a real disaster.
