The North Adams (MA) Transcript has an article on current thinking by college students, their professors and college librarians regarding library and internet use. Reporter Ryan Quinn speaks with students attending elite Williams College (in Williamstown) and the Mass. College of Liberal Arts (in North Adams).
Interviewees discuss such issues as physical distance from the library, tutorials on researching, research tools, credibility of sources, primary sources, filtering, plagarism, and (of course) the value of librarians.
The real value…
In this age of information, I find that librarians become especially useful when it comes to interpreting and determining the actual value of given information. Because of training, education, and just good ol’ fashioned field experience; it’s almost like we can smell suspect or bad information. Sure the internet ushered in a new era of information resource, but, if you’ll pardon the phrase, it also brought with it a new era in information bullshit.
Any schmuck can write a website, and even the most well intentioned person can screw up. It only takes a minor typo to start World War II in 1942 or say that John Wilke Both killed Lincoln. Even if the student doesn’t know anything about the topic, and doesn’t want to use a lot of books, the least we can do is offer some kind of fact checking service by referring them to other sources better edited than a webpage.
I did that a lot in college, and I do quite a bit of it now. Sure, blahblahblah.com says that tachyons don’t exist. But for those who know anything about physics, that’s not the end of the story. Yet someone doing just a rudimentary report on physics for a science class, they won’t know any better. We will, and that’s what we’re for.
INTERNET is a Partner Not a Supplanter
The INTERNET is one of the greatest advances in the time needed to find information, Unfortunately in a technologically charged age people tend to view any information that comes from the computer as truth. The INTERNET is an information tool. It enables anyone to access needed information quickly. Does quickly mean accurate? Not necessarily. It has always been my contention that even with the INTERNET and the search for inforomation, a type of reference interview is needed to make the search productive. How many times have we had a patron who tells us they are looking for one thing and after our talk with them we find out it is something entirely different. Imagine a person and home not really refining search and search stategy. They can spend many hours going nowhere and have many distractions. Many people also trust everything they read on the INTERNET and accept it as truth. Imagine if a shrewd power seeker uses the INTERNET effectively, upheaval, strife, and worse can come about. The INTERNET combined with an information professional can be a wonderful resource and can yield incredible benefits to society but it has real possibilities to confuse and mislead. Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein as a criticism of the Industrial Revolution. Imagine technology can create a man but not a man with a soul.