Running the traps

 

“Running the traps” is an old expression from the 1800s when hunters and fishermen would set traps for what they wanted to catch. For most of my faculty career, running the traps meant my daily survey of the published literature in my field. When I started as an assistant professor in 1987, there was no internet. Every afternoon around 3 PM, the journals that had been received that day would be laid out on a table in a special room in the Health Sciences Center library. Since the library was only in the next building, I’d walk over and leaf through the current issues of whatever journals were relevant. And for the first 20 years, my department had a small library of journals that was directly across the hall from my office. 

Eventually, all the journals I was interested in went online and for most, I could sign up for notification when a new issue appears. Then, journals started posting manuscripts as soon as they were accepted. 

Staying current with the literature is an imperative for academic success, and so checking the table of contents of journals every day for 35 years was as natural as eating—in fact, I looked forward to reading each TOC like a hot cup of fresh coffee. 

Once I closed my lab (five years ago), the imperative to stay current disappeared, and gradually my addiction to reading new papers has waned. Now, I mostly get notifications of links to the medical literature in my email, and read occasional articles linked to blog posts. Do I miss running the traps? No, not really. Now, I fill that time reading books for pleasure and reading reviews that point me to books I’ll read in the future.