I have a _lot_ of paper still. The question is what I'm going to retain and which I'll let the libraries retain. The handbooks are different--when I need to know, say, what the field thought about X in 1990, the handbooks or their equivalent for that era can be essential. But for producing articles or research, I use them as summary tools to keep current-ish--they are better thought of as slow-moving periodicals. (And in some cases, like the OUP handbook for political psychology, the older versions simply are inaccurate guides to the field--10 years is a long time in applied fields, which are the hardest ones to keep track of.)
A future post, probably, should involve the difficulties of finding repositories of textbooks, which is ironic considering how core we know they are. the acquisition processes for libraries shouldn't be the same as for private, working libraries!
Marked-up books, as you imply, are the real gems. Those books are the lowest priority to get rid of, because the marginalia is critical. (Although I did cast a hard eye at "Neorealism and Its Critics".) But marginalia on textbooks for OLS ... well, at this point, if I need to know about estimation techniques, using 15 or 20 year old references is dangerous -- the damn methodologists keep changing how we're supposed to estimate things.
FWIW, I put a few pages of Keohane’s introduction to NAIC on the first week of my fall intro IR syllabus, because I think it’s still the best simple answer to the legitimate question of “why are we studying all this weird abstract theory stuff?”
Agreed on the related fields point. Press that insight. Other fields are definitely progressing (biology, psychology, archeology and anthropology, etc). IR itself? Not so much, perhaps (would love to read a good defense of what we actually know more about now than earlier). Therein lies a very interesting meta theoretical issue that gets to the heart of the subject and how we should teach it…
Lol--it was EXACTLY Keohane's chapter that saved it!
Foreign policy analysis has 100% gotten ... well, at least more testable. And Gilpin is in no danger of disappearing from the shelves! I will say that _in general_ historical knowledge has gotten much better, at least in islands of debates, than it was in Waltz's time. On the other hand, the most exciting book in IPE (popular crossover edition) at the moment is almost literally Keohane and Nye Meet The Internet, so maybe the cumulation has been less than advertised.
But… what if you don’t like reading on screens? And what if you’ve marked up books?
And why do you assume political science has progressed so much that newer work is better?
I have a _lot_ of paper still. The question is what I'm going to retain and which I'll let the libraries retain. The handbooks are different--when I need to know, say, what the field thought about X in 1990, the handbooks or their equivalent for that era can be essential. But for producing articles or research, I use them as summary tools to keep current-ish--they are better thought of as slow-moving periodicals. (And in some cases, like the OUP handbook for political psychology, the older versions simply are inaccurate guides to the field--10 years is a long time in applied fields, which are the hardest ones to keep track of.)
A future post, probably, should involve the difficulties of finding repositories of textbooks, which is ironic considering how core we know they are. the acquisition processes for libraries shouldn't be the same as for private, working libraries!
Marked-up books, as you imply, are the real gems. Those books are the lowest priority to get rid of, because the marginalia is critical. (Although I did cast a hard eye at "Neorealism and Its Critics".) But marginalia on textbooks for OLS ... well, at this point, if I need to know about estimation techniques, using 15 or 20 year old references is dangerous -- the damn methodologists keep changing how we're supposed to estimate things.
FWIW, I put a few pages of Keohane’s introduction to NAIC on the first week of my fall intro IR syllabus, because I think it’s still the best simple answer to the legitimate question of “why are we studying all this weird abstract theory stuff?”
Agreed on the related fields point. Press that insight. Other fields are definitely progressing (biology, psychology, archeology and anthropology, etc). IR itself? Not so much, perhaps (would love to read a good defense of what we actually know more about now than earlier). Therein lies a very interesting meta theoretical issue that gets to the heart of the subject and how we should teach it…
Lol--it was EXACTLY Keohane's chapter that saved it!
Foreign policy analysis has 100% gotten ... well, at least more testable. And Gilpin is in no danger of disappearing from the shelves! I will say that _in general_ historical knowledge has gotten much better, at least in islands of debates, than it was in Waltz's time. On the other hand, the most exciting book in IPE (popular crossover edition) at the moment is almost literally Keohane and Nye Meet The Internet, so maybe the cumulation has been less than advertised.
Come to think of it, Halperin also made the cut (although I assign the revised edition)