Since I live more than an hour’s drive off of campus, most of my research takes place from my spare bedroom. Internet access is a wonderful thing, as I can search through vast libraries of knowledge without leaving my computer. One downside to this comfort, however, is that most of the databases I use on a regular basis do not house articles published before about 1990. In most cases, any journal issued before then has to be tracked down at the library. Of course, for me, that’s not a simple walk across campus.
My adviser noted one day that the situation isn’t much different for the grad students who live closer to the university. After commenting that nobody wants to spend time digging through the library stacks to pull out old articles, he said, “We’re going to spend the next twenty years rediscovering what was published forty years ago.”