Research Open House

[hrj]

My first monthly research open house seems to have been a success. The ravening locusts ... um .... invited guests condensed my three bookcases of books-to-get-rid-of into two. Then there was much pulling of volumes off the shelf to peruse (I wisely suggested that people put their take-away stashes in their vehicles before starting on MY books) and we has a meandering discussion of how one starts a research project and how one knows whether one is finished. There seemed to be a loose consensus to turn the currently announcements-only mailing list into an actual discussion list. Some ideas were tossed around for seminar topics for next month -- current ideas are "how to mine a bibliography" and "academic journals: what are they and what do you do with them". A short list of requests was submitted to pull from the UCB library for next month's session and a couple of plates were scanned and e-mailed off to the requester. (I suggested that folks who want to scan stuff might want to bring thumb drives in the future.) And then they all went away again.

The fairly unstructured format seemed to work this time (especially given that the first hour was spent in going through the book give-away), but I think having the seminars will help keep things interesting in the future. Some people had specific topics they wanted to work on; others just wanted to explore. All in all, pretty much what I hoped would happen. Now the real test will be whether it keeps momentum. I'll talk it up again when next month's session rolls around.