Dissertation bibliography inventory

[dr_whom]

Works cited in my dissertation: 82

Journal articles: 23
Books: 32
Book chapters: 10
Conference presentations: 10
Penn dissertations: 4
Non-Penn dissertations: 1
Web sites: 1
Blog posts: 1 (Thanks, neil_werewolf!)

Works by my dissertation advisor: 12
Works by me: 5
Works with no named author or editor: 3
(Scholarly) works by well-known fiction authors: 2

Works dated 1936 or earlier: 17
Works dated 2007 or later: 16
Works dated "to appear": 1

Works I have never seen or read, even in part: 3

Works that are not about linguistics or language: 21
Works that have "New York" in the title: 19

Works in which my dissertation is cited: 3

Longest reference (and last reference added): “Population trends in New York State’s cities” (2004). Local Government Issues in Focus 1.1. Office of the New York State Comptroller, Division of Local Government Services & Economic Development. Available at http://www.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs/research/pop_trends.pdf; viewed 6 December 2009.

Comments

[pastwatcher]

Hurrah!! Where are you in the process: have they attacked yet?

[dr_whom]

The process? 100% done. I defended October 13th. On Friday I handed in my final draft to the "margin lady"; she checked that all my pages were numbered, and that's the last step.

(Although I just noticed that two of my footnotes in Chapter 2 are in a different font than everything else; I wonder how that happened.)

[prisminawindow.livejournal.com]

Woo! Congratulations! (somewhat belatedly)

[dr_whom]

Thank you!

[q10.livejournal.com]

i missed this earlier, but congrats!

[dr_whom]

Thanks!

[dumble.livejournal.com]

Whooooooo congratulations!

I have an awesome card that I have been holding on to for months, which I wanted to send you when you finished your dissertation. Due to poor planning on my part, the card is now in San Diego, while I am in Boston. So you'll get it eventually... Maybe I'll give it to you at the Mystery Hunt.

[dr_whom]

Thanks!

(Mystery Hunt sounds good!)

[rford.livejournal.com]

Works you have never seen or read?!

[dr_whom]

Two more or less of the form "Preston (2008), using data from Ito (1999), argues that..."; I haven't read Ito (1999).

The third is because I mentioned at one point that the feature I was studying is known not to be very much affected by carefulness or casualness in speech style, and my advisor said I should really give a reference for that. I said, okay, what's the source for that? And he said he thought it was from a conference paper by Sherry Ash. I asked Sherry about it and she said, Yes, that was my paper; but she couldn't find a copy of it, so I haven't actually seen it.

I dunno; I feel bad about citing things I haven't read, but midnight_sidhe says that that's just the way it's done.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Within reason, obviously. If your bibliography is one hundred citations long and you've only personally looked at twenty of them, yeah, there's something dramatically wrong with that. If it's more like fifteen, well, that's more reasonable. If it's five? Totally unobjectionable.

I think the point is, you could sit around reading stuff until the cows come home, because so much work has been done by now, but if you do that, you'll never produce anything yourself. And sometimes there will be exactly one sentence in the article you're third-party citing that is actually relevant to your work, namely, the one the third party already cited for you. (This has happened to me many times.)

[cynara-linnaea.livejournal.com]

A HUGE huzzah for you! Congratulations!!!

[dr_whom]

Thanks! It's quite a relief!