Reading the Literature

• How you go about reading the literature depends on a lot of factors including the domain, your background, and your question.
• Typically, people start with books in the domain.
• This gives you a broad background, is relatively reliable, and relatively accessible.
• In developed fields, classic texts (like [James 1892] or [Hebb 1949]) are particularly important.
• Anything that's lasted that long and is still read and quoted is pretty solid.
• Of course books aren't always right and
• books tend to be a few years behind the leading edge at best.
• So eventually, you want to get to journal articles and even conference articles.
• There are more prestigous journals and more prestigous conferences, and the best work is usually published in the best journals.
• Journals are usually better than conferences.
• Of course going to a conference is a great way to meet people and more thoroughly understand their work.
• You can usually send email to journal and conference article authors if you need to.