iSchool influenced research area

I missed my post last week, so I haven't posted a daisy yet and I don't have a graphic for it at the moment. My research interested seems to be focusing on how undergraduate students interact with manuscripts when they first encounter them in education, with a focus on how the increasing preference for and familiarity with full text digital sources impacts their interaction with the media. In order to bring the scope down to a Masters level project I would have to focus more clearly on something - my tentative plan is to look at how undergraduate students seek out primary sources when researching medieval manuscripts, and their thought process throughout the search.

This topic is part of the larger field of information seeking behaviour, and represents a major change from what my original approach to the topic would have been, showing clear influence in my studies at the iSchool. I have been intrigued by manuscripts and the study of medieval texts through manuscripts since my first medieval literature class as an undergraduate, and I've considered research in the area through many different lenses, although I haven't pursued any of them. For a long time my instinctive focus would have been an extension of an undergraduate paper comparing translations of the Canterbury Tales. However, studying at the iSchool has changed how I view my studies a lot, to the degree that my research area is impacted by it.

One of my most distinct memories from studying the Canterbury Tales is that, over the course of a semester, I started developing significant back and shoulder pain from carrying my huge edition of Riverside Chaucer to and from class every day. I actually complained to my professor that he asked us to have the text in class too often when we didn't need it and he apologized. At the time I desperately wished for a digital text but I made no effort to search for one. I remember that near the end of the semester the professor introduced the scanned Hengwrt manuscript to some students, but at the time I had focused on translated texts and it didn't appear relevant.

What strikes me the most about these memories now is not my desire for a lighter text or a digital edition, but that I never put significant effort into finding a digital text despite my desire for one. I attempted a few brief searches on my own, but I didn't put significant effort into the search, or look to my professor or a librarian for assistance. The questions I want to ask now are about how my professor's presentation of the text influenced my commitment to the Riverside edition, how the media of the text influenced my interactions with it and estimations of the likelihood of finding a digital copy, and how my perception of the text and media influenced my search for secondary materials. In short, my analysis of my past experience is now shaded in the tones of information studies.