Comments on: Google, stupidity, and libraries

By: mace

mace — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:13:51 +0000

I’m coming here one year after the post. Thank goodness for internet!! Thanks for the excellent post and fantastic comments you all have made.

Especially Jenny’s point that we don’t have data to compare to is spot on! I never liked these “we have lost the golden days” -rhetorics. When i ask when exactly was there such a time that everyone loved to read things properly and think things over thoroughly, i never seem to get an anstwer. Such a time is perpetually in the past. Aristotle wrote about it, didn’t he.

One more thing: i happen to know librarians’ often check the google before delwing into their own Quality Databases Of Meaningful Knowledge, even if they would silently disapprove other people doing so.

By: New library blog « Level 1 Librarian

New library blog « Level 1 Librarian — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:12:49 +0000

[...] favorite post has to be Google, stupidity, and libraries by Kim [...]

By: Ross Betzer

Ross Betzer — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:19:30 +0000

I’ve read Carr’s article (all the way through. In fact, I sat in a public library and read it in the actual, physical Atlantic magazine, while on vacation in South Dakota). It was some time ago, but I remember finding the article quite thought-provoking.
An under-appreciated book on this issue of technology and its effect on us and our culture is “Technopoly” by Neil Postman. Though written in 1993, it’s still quite relevant. One of the author’s major points is that every technology has positive and negative effects: e.g., books let us record our history, but perhaps we have lost some of our personal ability to remember. Postman would have us think about and reflect on the good and bad of any new technology.
Lots of people get upset when someone (like Carr) discusses the potential negatives of a new technology (like Google), but no one seems to notice that most everybody else (including us in library-land) are just singing the praises of every new technology without considering their ramifications.

By: Jan Massie

Jan Massie — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:30:40 +0000

Hi Kim: That would be great. The Colbert Report interview wasn’t that great. Too short and jokey, albeit entertaining. My email address is fortuneontherocks at yahoo.com. Thanks.

By: Jenny Parsons

Jenny Parsons — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:42:23 +0000

@Steve: I’ve got it on my to-read list. From what I can tell, it’s one of those things I need to read when I’m in one of my more patient moods. Starting on it after reading Carr’s article may make me go ballistic– not fair to the author. (Or to Carr, truth be told. :) )

@Hilary: I think you’re right where libraries are concerned. Regardless of whether or not Google and its ilk really are changing the nature of research and scholarship, a library can’t motivate a student who isn’t interested in learning to begin with.

But of course, if something magical happens, and the student’s mind is changed…then, yes, we should be there. And the student should know to come to us, because we were helpful to him or her when they just needed so many articles or references for their papers.

By: Hilary Davis

Hilary Davis — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:49:59 +0000

Kim – great post – thanks for challenging me to think about more than just ARL statistics this week!

It’s definitely more than just Google, search engines, and other quick-snippet rides into the info landscape that lead to suggestions that Google is making people tend toward do just enough to get by. We’re all distracted and easily distract-able because of the pretty huge amount of info made available. We’re all being asked to do so much more, respond to anything and everything, have an opinion on a broad swath of topics rather than develop deep thoughts about a few things. I also think that for students in particular, skimming the surface of most things is normal. And what they do conduct deep research on is determined by what they value at a particular time in their lives – and I don’t honestly think that the period of time from teens to twenties is when they actually value deep thinking about school work (with exceptions, of course). I do agree with your suggestion that certainly a role of libraries is to be a place where deep thinking can happen – when the conditions are right – and what librarians can do is to foster those conditions and invite students to ask themselves deeper questions while helping them find x number of references for the paper that’s due tomorrow. I’m also not saying that students are incapable of deep research, I just think that an issue has to mean something to them on a personal level for it to be possible to dive deeper.

Just my two cents.

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:22:42 +0000

I’m firmly in the Jenny Parsons and Jim Duran camp. I’m not convinced that people are any dumber than before, and I’m not convinced that students won’t rise to the occasion if taught properly and given appropriate, challenging assignments.

You might also be interested in what Wayne Bivens-Tatum has written on another, similar publication, The Dumbest Generation?

By: Jenny Parsons

Jenny Parsons — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:13:25 +0000

@Derek: Thank you.

This is a sore spot with me– I’m not sure if it’s the cognitive psych undergraduate background, or the deep love of research that I’ve always had (“You want to stop there? But…there’s this book on ancient Egyptian burial customs among the lower classes! Doesn’t that sound like fun…oh, okay.”)

@Emily: Such great questions…I don’t know if we have the data to answer them. I don’t know if we’ll ever have that data, actually.

But your question “Is it lack of critical thinking or sheer laziness?” makes me wonder– how would you tell the difference between the two? At some point, critical thinking begins to come naturally to young people; one of the byproducts of puberty is a development of abstract thought. Is it the fault of student for not applying to their work the same vigor of inquiry they apply to American Idol or parsing of Facebook wall posts? Or is it the fault of educators for not demanding such rigorous work? Both, maybe? I don’t know– I know these questions are too knotty to answer here.

@Jim: I like the point you make. Or, as a rejoinder: you could help faculty members devise curricula and assignments that simultaneously press the relevance and difficulty of research as well as the subject matter of the class. Of course, you’d need the faculty member’s tacit approval, and agreement, and willingness to share stage time…all of these things can be hard.

By: Jim Duran

Jim Duran — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:39:06 +0000

Perhaps we are not challenging students with “deep research” questions. If a freshmen can effectively meet the standards of a college paper by finding three sources from one Google search, then maybe professors need to change the curriculum to make it harder for students to find relevant sources. I think the problem is not that students have a vast wealth of knowledge at their finger tips, it’s that they are only asked to write papers about “Wolves in Idaho” or the “oil crisis”. Sure, if they wanted to they could spend hours at the library studying these topics, but Google gives me 1,330,000 hits for “Wolves in Idaho” and 6,090,000 hits for “oil crisis”.

I think we have a 20th century education system with 21st century students.

By: Kim Leeder

Kim Leeder — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:35:28 +0000

Hi Jan, the quotes were collected from sites around the Web, which makes them more interesting to me because it wasn’t an interview. So these are unself-conscious comments that still offer a flavor comparable to the Colbert interview with Carr.

I could send it to you if you give me your email address…