>It seems to me that there are a number of students who are genuinely
>clueless as to prioritizing research. For instance,  the first thing you
>should do is use the library and exhaust the printed sources and Interlibrary
>loan for books and articles. Questions to the list should be very specific
>and formulated only after serious research and study. It's not the job of
>the list members to provide basic research or papers. But I think that
>some students don't understand that print research should proceed questions
>to the list.
>
>Perhaps there could be a standard or canned response to these questions
>that cites appropriate general books and articles to begin research with.
>In that way you would be giving a response but not feeling like you have
>to do their work for them. Point them to Twain A to Z, Paine's biography,
>some critical works.
>
>I agree with Jerry O'Brien that these are inappropriate messages, but
>they seem to stem from basic ignorance of the research process.
>
>My 2 cents worth. ;-)  Mary Lou Caskey
>
>

Hello,

I can very well understand everybody's annoyance about research questions on
the Forum.
However, I feel the need to put some of your assumptions concerning 'lazy
students' in perspective.
Speaking for myself, I did my homework. I always consult bibliographies,
library catalogues etc.etc. I also would not consider myself a 'student' in
the sense you probably see students. I will graduate with my M.A. this
summer. (For those of you who are not familiar with the German educational
system I should add that there is _no way_ you can start with your
dissertation without getting the M.A. first). This means I'm now at
university for five years (we don't have collgeges!) and know the literature
business inside out. But there are situations where I just don't know what
to do. Going to school in Germany also means being far away from the latest
scholarship, magazines, reviews, publications etc. In general, I think we
are at least 8-12 months behind what is 'new' and exciting. (That is the
time it takes until magazins etc. are in our libraries).

So what happend was that some time ago I asked if anybody had an opinion on
the connection between Hank Morgan and the classical Picaro. Here in
Germany, this is a debate that has been around for some time. However I
never found any new American publication on that question (the MT
Encyclopedia only cites works from the 1970s). Since I consider the Forum a
place for scholarly discussion I posted that question, thinking this might
be an interesting thread for everyone. However, I only received some private
mails pointing to the literature recommended in the Encyclopedia. I was a
little disappointed that no one thought my question to be interesting enough
for discussion.But that's ok, becaus it made me aware of three things: 1.
Maybe my English is incomprehensible, 2. maybe American scholars in fact are
not interested in the study of the picaresque tradition (which could be
true, because the Picaro is an entirely European figure), which leads to 3.
maybe there really is a big difference between the German and American Mark
Twain studies (which, in my opinion, would be another fascinating topic for
Forum discussion).

Sorry for that long post. I just wanted to say, that not every student who
is looking for some advice on how to do research is just too lazy to go to
the oibrary.

Another thing that I'v always wanted to say, but never had the courage to: I
love this list; I know that all _the_ great Mark Twain scholars are on it.
And since I cannot attend Mark Twain conferences or other get togethers
easily (being on another continent really makes you see the limits :) ) I
always have the feeling I am sort of 'close' nevertheless.

Sincerely,
Ines Koessl-Timm