Given that I catalog German monographs, I decided to attend the Germanists Interest Group of the Association of College and Research Libraries. I had never attended this group before; I learned of the group from John Marner of Texas A&M. I don't know what I was expecting, but even if I had made an educated guess, I think I would have been delightfully surprised by the presentation given by Dr. Axel Schmetzke (University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point) on Sunday.Dr. Schmetzke's presentation, Hugo Rheinhold's Philosophizing Monkey used the story of a small statuette to demonstrate how the web can be used to support research on obscure topics, especially by creating an "invisible college" of interested researchers.
Dr. Schmetzke has developed a highly detailed website recording the history of the monkey statue. He provided multiple perspectives on the statues meaning, including depictions of monkeys in art, influences on the statues composition (such as Rodin's La Pensure), the statue's reference to Darwin's theory of evolution, and Rheinhold's social and political activities. The scope of his research on this small piece is staggering and impressive, synthesizing the intellectual traditions of many scholarly disciplines.
In the conclusion of this highly entertaining presentation, Dr. Schemtzke discussed his research process, touching on web resources in particular. He maintained that while web research is powerful, it can't replace print-based research; rather the two are complementary and equally important.
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