This should be a fledgling historian’s maxim & I wish someone had told me this earlier. When you start out studying history — when you begin as a graduate historian, you are nothing; you are not even the history books you’ve already read, because you’ve probably misunderstood or not appreciated some fundamental aspect of them. You are an infant: the first eighteen or twenty years of your life were spent stumbling, coming to terms with living, with the world and with yourself. By the time you get to my age (23) you’ve had maybe four or five years of actual consciousness, self-awareness and self-understanding. You are now about five years old. Then, and only then, the real work begins.
And the work is: Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You’re five years old. Don’t presume too much to know what’s important and what isn’t. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it’s just one line saying “Never read this again”; collect newspaper clippings and email them to yourself; collect quotes; save your ideas for future papers, future projects, future conferences, even if they seem wildly implausible now. Hoarding must become instinctual, it must be an uncontrollable, primal urge. And the higher, civilizing impulse that kicks in after the fact is organization, or librarianship. You must keep tabs on everything you collect, somehow; a system must be had, and the system must be idiot-proof. That is to say, you should be able to look back on it six months for now and not be completely stymied as to why you’ve organized things that way. (The present versions of ourselves are invariably the biggest idiots, and six months will make that clear).
What this all takes is patience — more patience, sometimes, than I am good at. I am impatient to know things, and impatient for things to make sense more quickly; and the discipline (ah, that apt term) just doesn’t work that way. A colleague of mine told me that he’s been Only Collecting for over ten years, and can now knock out a 3000 word paper in under two days, simply because all his material is already at hand; it exists in the stuff he’s picked up in his intellectual infancy and adolescence, which at the time he didn’t know how to use, and perhaps didn’t even know was important.
Here, there’s one more point I could make: time fine-tunes your collecting habits. You are a predator of sources. Over time, things will start to jump out at you. For a lionness in the savannah on the hunt, the merest movement in the grass is a stimulus to action, but she has learned to distinguish between the random twitches of the landscape and the presence of prey. In the library and the archive, the hunt is as much a matter of skill as of instinct. In short, until you’re an adult lion, jump at everything — even if it turns out just to be a falling leaf, or a totally bizarre interview between George Bernard Shaw and a Saudi Muslim mystic in Mombasa in 1936, which I discovered amidst some otherwise entirely unremarkable magazine articles on the nature of Islam in Southeast Asia.
November 26th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Excellent advice! Of course, when we’re toddlers and need to know this, we’re also determinedly independent, insistent on doing it OUR way. In our adolescence, we are sure that all around us are idiots and that we know all.
Maybe grad school is when we get that knocked out of us, when we learn that ego is misplaced arrogance, when we realize – in horror – that we’ve NOT saved just everything we’ve collected.
GBS & a mystic! What a find!
November 26th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
ah, information overload.. how can I live without? ❤
November 27th, 2008 at 1:25 am
I commented on this post over at Snarkmarket, but I’ll repost my conclusion here:
This model of collecting is especially persuasive to me because as the second half of the post indicates, it is, at bottom, a way to protect yourself from who you are.
November 28th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
sometimes there’s no need to protect, per se! I often leave my future self money hidden in various pockets & crannies of my room. The future delight derived from this is wholly dependent on your present self’s pitiful memory & general low-level incompetence. In about six weeks or so, I am invariably delighted.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm
This is such good advice that I wish I weren’t sixty. The only thing that I would add is: begin at the beginning, no matter how irresistible the alternative might seem.
December 1st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
This is superbly written – a pithy encapsulation of my entire method. I have a couple of pages you might find interesting:
http://www.boybedlamreview.com
http://opusmaximum.blogspot.com
December 1st, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Brilliant..apparently your 5 years have taught you more than my decades! 🙂
December 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
[…] Great advice from a historian: Collect everything. […]
December 1st, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Here you go, fledgling historian:
http://www.archive.org/details/2004-h2k2-digitalhistory-jasonscott
December 1st, 2008 at 6:36 pm
[…] This is a great post about “Only Collecting,” or intellectual hoarding in the service of creating a personal library from which to draw. It’s targeted at would-be historians, but worth a read no matter who you are. (It’s short, too.) […]
December 1st, 2008 at 7:51 pm
[…] Leow makes me feel better about my books and boxes of stuff I’ve gathered through the years: Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You’re five years old. […]
December 1st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Yes, and do it all on Word. I have thousands of Word pages containing notes from the books I’ve read, all word-searchable at the drop of a hat.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
[…] On Becoming Somebody If you’re a young, know nothing attempting to understand the world, some good advice from Rachel Leow in the aptly titled letter to a young historian: […]
December 1st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
[…] Only Collect « a historian’s craft (via kottke) […]
December 1st, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Well said. A good start.
Do not merely collect. Be a collection.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:52 am
Thanks for all your kind comments! — I don’t think it’s ever quite too late to start this manic hoarding; in fact you might make fewer false starts with regards to the organizing and librarianship if you’re less green around the ears. Start today!
@Conrad: I too used to have a thousand text files in poorly organized folders rammed into every metaphorical crevice of my computer. These days I use Devonthink, which I highly recommend.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 am
Man, “a totally bizarre interview between George Bernard Shaw and a Saudi Muslim mystic in Mombasa in 1936” sounds so dang good. You wouldn’t happen to be willing to post an excerpt, would you?
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:28 am
“a thousand text files”
Ah, see, that’s the problem. I have one document. It works perfectly for me: anything more complicated would simply be too much.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 am
I am now newly inspired.
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:32 am
[…] Only Collect Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, indiscriminately. You’re five years old. Don’t presume too much to know what’s important and what isn’t. Photocopy journal articles, photograph archives; create bibliographies, buy books; make notes on every article or book you read, even if it’s just one line saying “Never read this again”; collect newspaper clippings and email them to yourself; collect quotes; save your ideas for future papers, future projects, future conferences, even if they seem wildly implausible now. Hoarding must become instinctual, it must be an uncontrollable, primal urge. And the higher, civilizing impulse that kicks in after the fact is organization, or librarianship. You must keep tabs on everything you collect, somehow; a system must be had, and the system must be idiot-proof. That is to say, you should be able to look back on it six months for now and not be completely stymied as to why you’ve organized things that way. (The present versions of ourselves are invariably the biggest idiots, and six months will make that clear). […]
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:02 am
[…] Only Collect « a historian’s craft "What this all takes is patience — more patience, sometimes, than I am good at. I am impatient to know things, and impatient for things to make sense more quickly; and the discipline (ah, that apt term) just doesn’t work that way. A colleague of mine told me that he’s been Only Collecting for over ten years, and can now knock out a 3000 word paper in under two days, simply because all his material is already at hand; it exists in the stuff he’s picked up in his intellectual infancy and adolescence, which at the time he didn’t know how to use, and perhaps didn’t even know was important." (tags: generalism advice research education sense-of-self inspiration collecting practice context I-do-this) […]
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
@ Saleem Reshamwala: Patience — all in good time! I’ve been planning on doing so 🙂 It needs a little digging, first.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
[…] interessante gedanken, den kompletten artikel gibt es dort: https://idlethink.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/only-collect/. […]
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
[…] 3, 2008 by Rachel I mentioned in the passing, in an earlier post, that I had come across a bizarre interview between George Bernard Shaw and a Saudi mystic. […]
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 pm
[…] Only Collect « a historian’s craft (tags: writing thinking research productivity lifehacks library life learning practice organization) […]
December 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
[…] Only Collect, written by a 23-year-old historian […]
December 6th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
[…] 6, 2008 · No Comments Rachel Leow essentially describes, better than I’ve ever been able to, my modus […]
December 8th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
For the record, this has probably changed my life.
December 10th, 2008 at 3:20 am
this is wonderful. it’s something i’ve been trying to do subconsciously all my life. this post has inspired me to do it more actively, more responsibly. thank you. 🙂
December 10th, 2008 at 3:42 am
[…] from Idlethink: […]
January 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
[…] some starred items in my RSS reader (an oft-forgotten realm of my digital life) and came upon a quote that snapped everything into perspective (via kottke): And the work is: Only Collect; that is to say, collect everything, […]
January 28th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Yes, yes, and yes. A long-time philosophy of mine. Excellent.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:55 pm
[…] I’m nowhere even near to being in the position to teach anyone yet, but I regard this as a glacial amassing of interesting photos, secondary reading, sound and video clips, primary sources, quirky anecdotes, […]
May 29th, 2011 at 11:46 am
[…] I photographed and PDFd archive material, typed all my notes into Devonthink, and opted to collect articles by PDF wherever […]
July 15th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
Hello Rachel.
I’m Polish collector of jokers.
I would be happy having contact with you.
If you want, we can exchange for jokers?
I send you a link to my bloog with jokers and
decks of cards to exchange.
http://szlemik.bloog.pl/
I greet You – Andrzej (anszpo@wp.pl)
May 12th, 2015 at 10:29 am
[…] via Only Collect | a historian's craft. […]
March 3rd, 2017 at 9:13 pm
[…] idlethink: Only Collect […]
March 25th, 2017 at 7:42 pm
[…] idlethink: Only Collect […]
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