Are we becoming a more specialized information-seeking culture? Given the advent of the internet, it appears that students and other information seekers are foregoing the use of general resources and heading straight for where they think the answer is. Keyword searching has brought on a mentality of pinpointing information rather than locating general topical resources and browsing through them for a glimpse of the big picture.

Of course, subject-specific resources are not bad and certainly have a place in libraries and learning, but the proliferation of these kinds of resources, both online and in print, is having some unintended results.

No more significant example can be provided than the use of encyclopedias in library Reference departments. Even encyclopedias have increasingly become more specialized. Why go to a general print encyclopedia like Britannica for a shallow treatment of a subject when you can grab a subject encyclopedia that uses a couple of volumes to go in depth on different aspects of the subject?

Just as the internet has changed people’s search habits by fostering immediate gratification (e.g., searching for full-text articles online rather than locating a print copy), so, too, have subject encyclopedias. The result is that people are using general resources less and heading right to the more specific items. Library usage statistics bear this out as well. In general, not only are people preferring online resources to print ones, but in both media formats they are turning more to topical sources with the assumption that the answer will be found more readily there.

While we can’t say for sure how this trend will be affecting scholarship in the future, it is safe to say that learners are settling for specific, detailed information rather than an education about the broader picture. By avoiding general resources because they’re too shallow, people are ending up with a shallower education. General resources have value in providing that big picture that helps people take a new topic and relate it to what they have already learned. Instead of constructing their own learning, they are answering questions as directly as possible, transferring information rather than assimilating it.

If this trend continues, not only will general resources be dropped from library collections, but learners will not retain their new information, thus reducing their learning. Specialization is good, but not to the neglect of the big picture, or of learning in general.