> >the activity of actually
> >excerpting the interesting bit
> ***** [T]he man who merely makes an inventory of his findings,
> while failing to establish the exact location of where in today's
> ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of
> his richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far
> less important that the investigator report on them than that he
> mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them.
> Epic and rhapsodic in the strict sense, genuine memory must therefore
> yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good
> archeological report not only informs us about the strata from which
> its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which
> first had to be broken through. (Walter Benjamin, "Excavation and
> Memory," _Selected Writings_ Vol. 2, 1927-1934, trans. Rodney
> Livingstone, et al., ed. Michael W. Jennings, et al., Cambridge, MA:
> The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1999, p. 576) *****
>
> Yoshie
Yoshie - first, I should apologize for the snippy part of my remarks ('does anybody read these?...').
I have read academic literature (in statistics), and they do things differently there. Perhaps the field is wierd. When writing an article, the applicable previous work is cited. If necessary, equations, definitions, and *short* excerpts may be used.
However (at least in statistics), the author doesn't quote previous articles in their entirety.
To use an analogy, the proper way to present archeological findings would be to refer to neighboring strata, cite applicable findings, and perhaps quote short pieces of those articles. The method you're employing would be analagous to an author quoting entire previous articles before starting the actual article being written.
Establishing the exact location doesn't require (TMHO) that the author quote the entire body of literature on a topic, just cite the relevant articles, and quote only as necessary.
Barry