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/lit/ - Literature

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12540811 No.12540811 [Reply] [Original]

I'm desperate.

Where do you guys get information? Obscure facts and whatever. Where do find compendiums?

There are so many things that I want to research and google doesn't fucking work. All I get are top 10 lists showing the same ten info snippets that don't explain fucking anything.

I have this problem with basically anything I want to know. Medieval tools and clothing, archaic terms for shit, how people did stuff, why people did that stuff. Hell, sometimes I just want to know why certain foods are holiday foods.

For example, right now I want to know what the liver symbolizes in mythology. A lot of folklore creatures eat only the liver, the thing with prometheus, etc. I mean yeah, it's the organ that "moderates qi", but a 5 line paragraph on yahoo answers can't be all there is to know- this shit is intercultural.

Or, I want to focus on specific areas for example, native american folklore. And all I can fucking find are coyote, thunderbird, skinwalker, EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT A FUCKING SKINWALKER IS!

Japanese folklore is the fucking worst too. Do you have ANY IDEA how many japanese monsters there are? A stupid amount, and everytime you looks for ANYTHING japanese you get the same 15 monsters. It doesn't even matter WHAT you're looking for.

I'm getting really fucking frustrated constantly being stoned-walled by fucking top ten lists and pages that've been dead since 2003. Or worst of all, company bios.

is this the right place to ask this?

>> No.12540830

unironically, old books in libraries.

Look at Wikipedia, what are the most popular articles? Games, animu, vidya, current TV. Anything earlier than 2004 doesn't exist, anything that isn't American doesn't exist. Look at Torrent, what do they have? Movies, TV shows, they don't show anything from before 2004. And certainly fanboys aren't going to write articles or websites about non-pop culture.

>> No.12540831

>>12540811
>Where do you guys get information? Obscure facts and whatever. Where do find compendiums?
This is the literature forum, where do you think we get it from?
Books.
Google/Wikipedia is for pseuds.
If you want more than a snippet go to the library and find a book on the subject.

>> No.12540842

Just check the references section of the wiki page and read that lmao

>> No.12540848 [DELETED] 

Books.
To find books: books.google.fi and similar sites.
:^)

>> No.12540857

>>12540811
>Japanese folklore is the fucking worst too. Do you have ANY IDEA how many japanese monsters there are? A stupid amount, and everytime you looks for ANYTHING japanese you get the same 15 monsters. It doesn't even matter WHAT you're looking for.
How do you know there are more than 15 monsters? You must have found that somewhere. Start there.

>> No.12540868

>>12540830
>>12540831
I suppose so, but whatever I manage to find is rarely much more in depth, unless the book is about that one specific subject. Encyclopedias only have blurbs. I once went through a whole book written in like, the 17th century looking for a single, specific nugget of information and it was maybe, a single sentence.

I mean, I get it, and that's just what I'll have to do, but there's gotta be one nerd in the field that just collects this shit? I mean some chick spent 7 years posting buffy info every 20 minutes.

>> No.12540876

>>12540830
You clelarly haven't spend enough time on Wikipedia.

>>12540811
Go to wikipedia, look up the sources. Often it's shitty newspaper articles, but the best articles have textbooks, scientific papers, or well-regarded scholarly anthologies as their sources.

Try also Wikisources (for literature) which has entire body of work, often in the original.

You can also look up the official pages of famous unviersity (like Standford encyclopedia of philosphy https://plato.stanford.edu/).).

All those ressources are one or two smart google searches away from you, and they will let you know what books exacty you need to read.

Then you can search your books (try libgen for anything scientific and a lot of the non-scientific) online and download them as pdf or, in the worst case, learn in what physical libraries you can find them.

>> No.12540884

>>12540868
Another thing about Wikipedia, is that most of the articles are in English. Depending on your subject, the best book might in a different language altogether. Despite muh information, people on Wikipedia tend to be monolingual

another thing you should check are big university libraries, but that does mean you have to live near a big 10 university or your local library must have an inter-library loan program

>> No.12540889

>>12540876
Also at some point it's likely you will have to contact a scholar on what you're researching. It's easier if you're studying/working in universities, but in any case, it involves looking up the most communicative of the important scholars in the field and e-mailing them.

You have to work on that e-mail so that is catches the interest of the gy enough for him to answer.

>> No.12540893

>>12540876
you're telling me that there are just as many in-depth articles about OP's medieval obscurity as Harry Potter fandom. Nope

>>12539646

>> No.12540911

>>12540893
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Middle_Ages

>> No.12540924

>>12540811
have you tried books?

>> No.12540934
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12540934

>>12540911
king arthur can't compete with the BHPC, big harry potter cock

>> No.12540938

>>12540876
>>12540884
>>12540911
Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you consider me a moron? OF COURSE I go through wikipedia. Sometimes, when I'm feeling really spiteful, I sit there for fucking hours.

Do you know how long it took me to track down the word speleothem? Do you know how much hair I pulled out? But I did it. I fucking did it.

I just don't want to have to do this every fucking time.

>> No.12540940

Merlin is real.

>> No.12540946

>>12540940
He suck's King Arthur's dick behind your local 7/11

>> No.12540948
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12540948

>>12540831
>Google/Wikipedia is for pseuds.
>Has over a hundred Wikipedia articles bookmarked and has at least 10 open in separate tabs right now
baka

>> No.12540952

>>12540938
why do you think the typical medieval professor stereotype is an old cranky guy, in a room covered in books?

>> No.12540960

>>12540952
Actually I was thinking of a sophomore in college running on too much coffee and the one other person just as fixated sitting hunched over a laptop.

>> No.12540962

>>12540946
Shut it kike.

>> No.12540967

>>12540962
eat my asshole

>> No.12540975

>>12540960
you're thinking of tablet commercials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=des3dpKtfIM

>> No.12540976

>>12540967
Fag

>> No.12540979

>>12540975
Huh. I wouldn't know. I'm usually thinking of Timeline and Archeology documentaries from the 90s.

>> No.12540982

>>12540979
in the meantime, you could probably do some work in scanning old documents, optical readers, proofreading, and making those books public

>> No.12540994

>>12540938
>speleothem
I just googled it and found the definition, what's so hard about that

>> No.12540998

>>12540811
Try looking for actual academic articles

scholar.google.ca/ to find articles
sci-hub DOT tw/ to pirate them


Also archive.org has tons of old stuff, just learn how to use google to narrow your searchs:
site:archive.org "whatever"

>> No.12541001

>>12540811
JSTOR

>> No.12541007

>>12540982
My guy, I hyperfixate on something for three days and move on. I'm not ready for that kind of commitment.

>>12540994
Because I didn't know what they were called. All I had to go on was "round objects formed in mineral dense water" I daisy-chained that shit for hours.

Imagine my reaction when I realized there's a colloquial term and it's "cave pearls"

I guess I am sort of a moron.

>> No.12541008

>>12540893
They are enough in-depth articles for a lifetime m8. Who cares that there is more Harry Potter articles (assuming that's the case, which I doubt), it's not like people read articles perfectly at random.

Hace you ever ever read an article on advanced mathematics on wikipedia ? It's a legit source even for professional mathfags (only they won't use as their main source, just as a light introduction or memory aid, but they will occasionnally use it).

>> No.12541026

>>12541007
Oh, I can understand if you were searching for a specific term by its definition - I hate that. That's why people underestimate the existence of humans in the age of information, you ask a human with the right knowledge what a 'round object formed in mineral dense water' is and they'll be able to get at what you're asking straight away - unlike Google who'll just show you ads for Evian.

>> No.12541033

>>12540811
Google Books

>> No.12541043

>>12541001
Thanks! Will use.

Still can't find an article about the significance of livers in mythology tho

>>12541026
Yeah. It's honestly exhausting.

>> No.12541050

>>12541007
>I guess I am sort of a moron.

It seems so, which kinda answer your own question here >>12540938.

>Because I didn't know what they were called. All I had to go on was "round objects formed in mineral dense water" I daisy-chained that shit for hours.

I understand why it could have taken so long. Paradoxically a general research can sometimes help more than a very specific one. In your example searching "cave" or "formations in caves" on wikipedia gives you an article or section with the right term. So it's only a matter of reading one article (though admittedly a long one). Which is still much shorter than a book and an occasion to learn more about the subject.

But serously, wikipedia -> caves -> type and formation and you have to read less than 20 lines. And it's not much of a stretch to think of doing that.

>> No.12541067

>>12541050
Sometimes my brain just takes the long way around. But, in my defense, I didn't start looking at caves. I went looking for things formed in water. Round things formed in water, round mineral formations- And, when I finally remembered that caves usually are the most mineral dense places, I found it pretty quick.

>> No.12541069

>>12541050
but he didn't even know that these things formed in caves, he only knew they formed in mineral water

>> No.12541075

>>12541069
oh, right, he didn't even know they formed in water. all he had was ball that forms in water

>> No.12541092

>>12541075
what?

>> No.12541093

>>12540811
>I have this problem with basically anything I want to know. Medieval tools and clothing, archaic terms for shit, how people did stuff, why people did that stuff. Hell, sometimes I just want to know why certain foods are holiday foods.
British Food, Clarissa Dickson Wright (she also has documentaries on BBC and YouTube)
The Hungry Empire, Collingham (literary and diarist sourced historical materialism of the British Empire and its spread)
The BBC is great for shit like this which will also give you literature to look up
Luxury in Ancient Greece:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ikws3

In medieval times
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ig0xw

>the liver symbolizes in mythology
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosha
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Xing
(For Western Art, Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, and The Language of Flowers, will help you read most visual and literary symbols)

>american folklore. And all I can fucking find are coyote, thunderbird, skinwalker, EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT A FUCKING SKINWALKER IS!
Black Elk Speaks is a whole history of a tribe
qallupilluit and wendigo [psychosis] might bring you more nice stories too from further north


>Japanese folklore is the fucking worst too. Do you have ANY IDEA how many japanese monsters there are? A stupid amount, and everytime you looks for ANYTHING japanese you get the same 15 monsters. It doesn't even matter WHAT you're looking for.
Lafcadio Hearn (for north American traditions like voodoo too he does a lot of stuff, but he's most famous for the Japanese stuff)
There are thousands of comprehensive blogs Google would have given you if you tried
https://japanesemythology.wordpress.com

It's the wrong place to ask this because now you've been spoonfed over 500,000 words of sources to read and expanded you backlog by at least four books and the Greeks, you have to read all that shit and not come back until you do if you don't want to be a permapseud intelleckshual butterfly faggot

>> No.12541123

>>12541043
I found a small article called Tityus: the forgotten myth of liver regeneration, which talks about how the liver was significant to the Greeks as the 'seat of life, soul, and intelligence'. Might be a good place to start if you read that and check the references.

>> No.12541133

>>12541092

>>12541067
>>12541007

>> No.12541494

>>12540811
if you have access to a university network, their library databases will be much more helpful than any google/wikipedia search

>> No.12541600

No one has mentioned what seems to me the most obvious answer.
Talk to someone knowledgeable.

>> No.12541606

>>12541600
>Talk to someone
no

NO

ANYTHING but that

>> No.12541615

>>12541600
got a lot of professors hanging around, do you?