Keeping in touch

I got a call today from my undergraduate university to update my details for their new alumni directory. They wanted all this stuff about the degrees I did, the year I graduated, my address (didn't give it to them), what I'm doing now, etc. Then they offered to sell me a lovely hardbound edition and a CD-rom for the low price of two payments of $44.95.

I declined, of course. I also declined the softcover edition and the abridged CD, which cost somewhere in the upper twenties. It led me to wonder: who would want these things, other than telemarketers? I keep up with the people I want to keep up with via Facebook. It's also helped me to catch up with people I haven't talked to in ten years, from high school and such.

I'm always impressed with how useful the Internet can be. Why bother digging through a phone book when you can Google someone's number or pop it into 411.com? Why bother paying for a premium edition of Classmates.com when you can be Facebook friends for free?

Really, there are so many better options out there.

A source is a source of course of course

I'm in the middle of compiling my list of sources for my Confirmation of Status paper. Instead of doing a Works Cited, my examiners really want to see a list of pretty much everything I've read.

I hate compiling lists of sources. I start with every intention to be well-organized, and it just doesn't happen - I get sources scribbled on Post-Its, written in my notebook, saved to my email, etc. I wouldn't mind using one of those source compiling programs like EndNote, but I've heard they're expensive and complicated, plus they don't have the style guide used by my faculty (MHRA, which is damn complicated).

But really, the hard thing for me is deciding which of the sources I have read but not cited should go on the list. Do I really cite everything I've looked at, including the ones where I've glanced at the first paragraph and said "No way," or is there some sort of threshold at which I can say it should go in the Bibliography? I don't want it to look like I'm trying to pad it, putting in sources I didn't even look at.

Any tips, fellow Humanities folks?