BiblioTech Web

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.

A pair of chickens walks up to the circulation desk at a public library and say, ‘Buk Buk BUK.’ The librarian decides that the chickens desire three books, so she gives them the books and the chickens leave shortly thereafter.

Around midday the two chickens return to the circulation desk quite vexed and say, ‘Buk Buk BuKKOOK!’ The librarian decides that the chickens desire another three books and complies. The chickens leave as before.

The two chickens return to the library in the early afternoon, approach the librarian, looking very annoyed and say, ‘Buk Buk Buk Buk Bukkooook!’ The librarian is now a little suspicious of these chickens. She gives them what they request, and decides to follow them.

She follows them out of the library, out of the town, and to a park. At this point, she hides behind a tree, not wanting to be seen. She sees the two chickens throwing the books at a frog in a pond, to which the frog keeps saying, “Rrredit Rrredit Rrredit…”

Here’s a great essay posted by Michael Stephens on his blog, Tame The Web, and written by one of his students, Juliette Loebl. It’s about her stereotypes and perceptions about becoming a librarian and how technology is helping her librarianship. Check it out at Is That a Bun in Your Hair, or Are You Just Happy to be a Librarian?

Great stuff!!

Back in October I blogged about flying your name to Mars. Well, I just got an email last night saying that the silica glass mini-DVD has been mounted in the Phoenix spacecraft, which has just been flown to Cape Canaveral, where it will begin final testing and preparation for launch.

Besides collecting names for the disc, they’ve also got “Visions of Mars” on there, which is a collection of art and literature written about the planet Mars.

The names and Visions of Mars were written to the silica mini-DVD by the company Plasmon OMS using a special technique. The resulting archival disk should last at least hundreds of years on the Martian surface, ready to be picked up by future explorers.

After the disc was written, a special label was applied to the disc to identify it for future explorers. Then, the whole assembly was “baked out” (to kill microbes and also to reduce future outgassing of the materials), and Lockheed Martin in Colorado installed it onto the spacecraft.

So you could say that this disc represents the first library on Mars! That’s VERY cool!

And my name’s on the disc! DOUBLY cool!

There’s a cool online bibliographic utility that I stumbled upon recently. It’s called BibMe and they say it’s “The fully automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills.” You can enter items manually or search their database for an item (items include books, articles, websites, and films.) using title, author, or ISBN.

If you’re not logged in and you do a search, you’ll get the results and all, but if you click the ’select’ button next to an item, it gives you a blank pane and doesn’t tell you anything. I took a guess and created an account and logged in and tried again. THIS time I got a screen that had all the info about the book in boxes, allowing me to change any of the info before adding it to my bibliography.

Once you’ve created the bibliography, you can download the results (in .rtf format) or save them to your account, and they give you the options of MLA, APA, or Chicago formats. If you change formats, make sure you click the Change button before downloading. Otherwise, you’ll THINK you’ve downloaded the new set of records when you really didn’t. The formats look pretty good overall. APA shows the titles in italics (which is allowed now) while MLA keeps them underlined.

If you’re like me, you’re curious about where they got their information. Well, if you dig into the “Help” info, you find:

We leverage the following services for our Auto-fill citation sources:
Book: Amazon Books
Magazine: LookSmart FindArticles
Newspaper: Yahoo! News
Website: Proprietary Web page parser
Journal: CiteULike Academic Papers
Film: Amazon DVD & VHS

Probably the most USEFUL part of this website, though, is the Citation Guide link on their toolbar. It takes you to a page with examples for different kinds of materials (e.g., books with 1, 2, 3, or more authors, websites, etc.) and three tabs at the top–one for each formatting style. So if you don’t find your item in their database or if you just enjoy doing it manually, this will be very helpful. Granted, it’s still only for general works, so if you’ve got quirky things like corporate authors or musical scores, you’ll still need the regular citation manuals. But this is great for basic materials.

Recently I read an article by Will Sherman called “Are Librarians Totally Obsolete?” that was, in part, a response to another article by a librarian that predicted that libraries would soon be no more.

A subtitle of Sherman’s article is: 33 Reasons Why Libraries and Librarians are Still Extremely Important. It’s a very well-written list of reasons libraries (and librarians) are necessary. All the more so since the advent of the Internet. Another terrific feature of his article is that there are links to all kinds of articles throughout his list.

I encourage you to read, or at least skim, his list of 33 reasons. And if you skim it, I’m sure you’ll end up reading it thoroughly.

Here is the conclusion of his article:

Society is not ready to abandon the library, and it probably won’t ever be. Libraries can adapt to social and technological changes, but they can’t be replaced. While libraries are distinct from the internet, librarians are the most suited professionals to guide scholars and citizens toward a better understanding of how to find valuable information online. Indeed, a lot of information is online. But a lot is still on paper. Instead of regarding libraries as obsolete, state and federal governments should increase funding for improved staffing and technology. Rather than lope blindly through the digital age, guided only by the corporate interests of web economics, society should foster a culture of guides and guideposts. Today, more than ever, libraries and librarians are extremely important for the preservation and improvement of our culture.