Syllabus finder

[samjones]

I'm overly excited and anxious for my first term in a new discipline and want to get familiar with some of the texts folks are reading in intro courses and general courses in my field of interest. To that end, I remember stumbling upon a SYLLABUS SEARCH ENGINE at some point and thinking, "This would be a great resource to start a personal reading list!" And although I went back to the site a few times, I don't have it bookmarked and can't remember how I found it and can't seem to find it again.

Does anyone know what I'm referring to? Does anyone know the web address?

*and yes, i feel silly creating a whole topic for this simple question. maybe there should be a question/answer thread for random little questions like this somewhere.

[Bumblebee]

I'm overly excited and anxious for my first term in a new discipline and want to get familiar with some of the texts folks are reading in intro courses and general courses in my field of interest. To that end, I remember stumbling upon a SYLLABUS SEARCH ENGINE at some point and thinking, "This would be a great resource to start a personal reading list!" And although I went back to the site a few times, I don't have it bookmarked and can't remember how I found it and can't seem to find it again.

Does anyone know what I'm referring to? Does anyone know the web address?

*and yes, i feel silly creating a whole topic for this simple question. maybe there should be a question/answer thread for random little questions like this somewhere.

This might sound a very complicated way of finding out the reading lists, but you may want to try it anyway. You can check the courses in the universities and then go to the university's bookstore to find out which books have been ordered for that course. That's how I've found out which books I will have to read next semester if I end up taking the courses I want. The main problem is that it won't tell you which articles you need to read.

I'm sorry I cannot help you with the syllabus search engine, but that sounds awesome. I hope I can find it so that I can start doing some reading this summer.

[grad_wannabe]

Sometimes syllabi are linked to or attached to class schedules... i know that's not as comprehensive as a search engine (which would be AWESOME) but it's something.

[samjones]

maybe "search engine" isn't the right word... it was site and you could search within it to find syllabi. it's not like Google for syllabi... more like a website that has compiled lots of syllabi.

unfortunately, i hadn't been able to find syllabi online for the intro courses at the school i'll attend, which is why i thought about the search engine. also, i wanted to look at reading lists for multiple schools so that i could have lots of options for getting familiar with the field.

i'm trying to avoid having to go to random schools to see if they have anthro programs and then see if those anthro programs have intro courses that have syllabi uploaded for those courses. but maybe that IS what i'll have to do. =( it just seems like an adventure of "random shots in the dark" or "blind shooting" as compared to finding this website.

both of your ideas are great, i'd just really like to remember what/where this site was. d*amn.

[oldlady]

FWIW, rather than go to the websites of random schools, go to the sites of a couple of the top schools in your discipline. I've done this and found a few syllabi that have been extremely useful.

[rogue]

You could just ask the professors at the school you're going to attend for their syllabi. I already have the syllabus for one of my classes and have started on the reading (I bought the textbook and I'm going to the school's library this week to get PDFs of the articles I need; the librarian there has been very helpful). The prof for another of my classes suggested some things to read as well when I talked to him at the admitted students day. I was a little hesitant to ask, but they seemed impressed that I wanted to get an early start. If you don't want to contact individual profs, the DGS or even current students would probably be willing to send you a few syllabi or point you to where you can find them online.