Quiet No More

The Unexpected Treasures of Digital Detours

• Carmen Cauthen

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Rabbit holes - those unexpected tangents we follow while researching - often carry a negative connotation as productivity killers. But what if these digital detours are actually where the magic happens?

Today I'm pulling back the curtain on my research process, particularly the way I embrace going off-script when following information trails. Just yesterday, what started as a simple search to enhance an advertisement led me through a fascinating journey connecting women's histories in ways I never anticipated. A single image search revealed blog posts I didn't know existed, uncovered that a woman was the granddaughter of a college president, and connected to another woman's hotel business I'd been documenting separately. These unexpected connections enriched my understanding and added crucial context to my work documenting the 400+ women of substance from Raleigh whose stories deserve telling.

These research diversions have practical challenges too. When you find yourself with 40-50 browser tabs open (we've all been there!), how do you manage that information effectively? I share my system for documenting sources, preserving disappearing web content, and organizing research materials for future use. I discuss how finding an oral history interview in an Ohio college archive - something I never would have specifically searched for - provided 30 pages of invaluable background on a respected community elder. The excitement of these discoveries fuels my passion for learning something new every day.

Whether you're researching for writing, personal projects, or professional work, I encourage you to see rabbit holes not as distractions but as opportunities for discovery. What unexpected connections might you uncover by following your curiosity down that next digital pathway? Join the conversation by sharing your own research rabbit hole stories and the treasures you've discovered along the way.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. So you've heard me talk about research and you've heard me talk about my process, sort of, but I want to talk about rabbit holes. Do you ever fall down a rabbit hole? So you know rabbit holes are in Alice in Wonderland. She falls down, she tumbles down into the rabbit hole and ends up somewhere else, and you know that's what research is all about.

Speaker 1:

When I am writing or researching, I go down rabbit holes all the time, and it's probably why I don't sleep a whole lot, because I get really excited when I go down a rabbit hole and find something new. When I go down a rabbit hole and find something new and you know, for me, learning something new every day is just I have to do it, I have to do it. So yesterday I was researching I was actually working on an ad for a program and the young lady had bought a half page ad and she only had one line to go on it and I was like, okay, she's not giving me anything else. What can I do to spice up this ad so it doesn't look like there's a mistake or, you know, there's just not enough something there. And so I went and looked for the picture for the woman that she was honoring and the picture that I was sent was it's not a good picture to work with. So I went to to Google to do a search and I searched the lady's name and before I hit images no, I think I hit images. No, I think I hit images. And then I saw all this. She had written, this woman had written a blog post and she had written actually two blog posts. And then I saw some other stuff that was attached to a college that I knew I had seen her when I spoke at the college, but I just assumed she was an alum. So it was a rabbit hole.

Speaker 1:

It was a rabbit hole that I spent a couple of hours going down, because I not only found information out about the lady, I found information out about a college, a president of a college, another woman to add to the list of women of substance you know we're at 400 women now just from Raleigh and then I found out information about another lady who I knew went to church with when I was growing up and grew up with her daughter, and I knew a little bit of information about the business that she ran. But then I found some more information and more pictures about the hotel that she ran and it was just fascinating and it was important information because even though I'd gotten some of the pictures and things from the daughter to honor her mother, I didn't have some of the other information that I found. So rabbit holes while they can be distracting, they can also give us so much additional information, something that we weren't looking for to begin with, but something that we found that enhanced what we were doing and what we knew and what we know. And sometimes nobody else has that information. You don't know where they got it from. One of my dear friends who is also researching, he found some stuff at a college that was like a thousand miles away from where he's researching and he reached out and purchased the information that they had.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you find information for free and sometimes you have to make a choice. Do I want to pay for this information? Sometimes it's important to pay because you don't know what you will find. One day I was researching hmm, I'm not even sure what I was researching that day, but I found out that a gentleman that I knew as an elder when I was growing up, who's the editor of a newspaper had actually done an oral history interview at, and that was housed at a college in Ohio. Now I'm in North Carolina. I would not have thought to look in Ohio for this oral history interview, Didn't even know it existed. It was buried with a bunch of other interviews that I just decided, since they were there, I would look and see if there was anything there that I could use as background information. As background information, 30 pages worth of information from this gentleman is amazing. I was able to share that interview with his son and his granddaughter, both of whom have been involved in the publishing business. He was part of a national publishers organization. Yesterday, the first lady that I was looking to get information out about, I found out she was the granddaughter of the president of the college and I had no idea that she had that connection to that college. And then the lady she made mention of this hotel across the street from the house that she lived, and the hotel was the one that was owned by another woman that I had been researching and I was able to find out more information about her.

Speaker 1:

You just don't know where rabbit hole will take you, and sometimes it takes you off the topic that you were originally researching or away from the information that you were originally looking for. And I have been known to have 40 or 50 tabs open on my computer, on my Internet site, and when I realize it's too much I will take a document and I will go to each tab and click and copy and paste that URL to a sheet of paper and title that paper what all those things you know what that research was about and store it in a place where I know I will go back at a later date and look at the information. And a lot of times I'll just copy and paste the information to a document and I make sure I put the link where I found it and the date that I accessed it, because I've learned as I'm writing books that I need to put the date that I access the information. Sometimes the pages get gone and if I'm worried about that then I will definitely copy and paste the information. So I have it. But I always want to be sure that when I'm researching whether I'm going down a rabbit hole or whether it's just the straight research that I have access to, where I got information from, Even if it's a picture, I'll create a document to go with the picture and name it the same thing as the picture and say this is where this came from, Because I don't want to start to use something in a document or a book and then be told or sued down the road because I've used somebody else's information.

Speaker 1:

It's one thing to use the information to write, but it's a total another thing to plagiarize, and so I'm not doing that. I am taking whatever and writing it in my own words, not chat GPT's words, my words, Because research shares stuff with us. Somebody else has done some of the work that you've done, Unless you're a scientist, and even scientists build on other work that somebody else has done, and so I just want you to know that a rabbit hole is not a bad thing. I wanted to share that with you and I wanted to tell you because that's something else I'm not going to be quiet about anymore. You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey, so you can be quiet.