Help me find the stuff I wrote way back when.

January 6, 2010 2:45 AM

What is the best and fastest way to locate articles written by me that were published ten years ago?

I'm trying to assemble a complete list of articles I've published over the past decade (give or take.) Unfortunately, due to the variety of things that can cause information loss and disorganization I have failed to keep a complete list of everything I've written and even my digital clipping folder is a bit faulty.

What can I do, beyond a Google ego search, to help me track down this information?

posted by medea42 to Writing & Language (7 answers total)

What sort of articles were they? If academic, google scholar would be a good place to start, as would reference lists of related articles. However, I can't imagine an academic losing track of what papers they have written, so...

If non-academic, were they mostly published with one or a few sources? (e.g. one or a few magazines or newspapers?) If so, I imagine back issues or searchable contents for those sources might be handy.
posted by forza at 3:20 AM on January 6, 2010

Response by poster: Most of them were non-academic articles for a specific interest (the occult.) A good chunk were done for Llewellyn annuals, but there was also a scattered spectrum of other publications, some of which are no longer in print, and I'm not sure they're the sort of thing that could get registered with the Library of Congress.
posted by medea42 at 3:22 AM on January 6, 2010

Do you have access to university-like resources? You could search WorldCat to see if any of that material is in a library collection somewhere. If you find it, you may be able to borrow it or get a copy through interlibrary loans if you are university affiliated. I doubt you'd be able to find your name in the database if you are just one contributor to a larger publication, but if you know specific titles, that could work.
posted by parkerjackson at 6:19 AM on January 6, 2010

Response by poster: Hmmm...my husband is a PhD candidate, so I'll see if he can hook me up. I'd be surprised if some of this stuff was academically affiliated or even acknowledged, but it's worth a shot.
posted by medea42 at 10:38 AM on January 6, 2010

There's a specialty database called Ulrich's that sometimes tells you if/where a particular periodical is indexed. So you could look up a particular title for which you wrote, then find the database/index that covers your title, then search for your name as author.

That depends on your title being indexed somewhere, though -- not all are. The benefit is that it can better tease out the pre-internet articles.

Also, since it's a pay, specialty database, you'd need to get it through a library somewhere.

And sometimes the websites of the individual publications themselves will tell you where the publication is indexed. (Assuming the site doesn't have an easy search right there.)
posted by lillygog at 11:07 AM on January 6, 2010

The databases are worth a shot. I looked up the "Llewellyn annuals" and found several books in libraries that were clearly from that organization. As long as they are more professional than "someone photocopied this on the sly at work", it's perfectly reasonable to think they might be in some library somewhere.
posted by parkerjackson at 7:03 PM on January 6, 2010

See what databases are available at your local public library. Mine, for example, has an amazing amount of databases that anyone with a library card can access for free. Most of these can even be accessed from home, although there are a few that you can only access while in the library.

(I swear by Lexis/Nexis for these kinds of things.)
posted by SisterHavana at 11:43 PM on January 6, 2010