Reading Response #5

Most college students are defiantly oblivious to things like online library catalogs, and search databases, and peer reviewed scholarships. Most students, I believe, are thinking “why would I go through the trouble, and confusion of a catalog search, when I could just Wikipedia it in 5 seconds?” I think this way all of the time. It’s pretty amazing that the scholarly databases are now up to 18,000 from 10,000 in 12 years. I agree with the fact that students are drowning in information. Its great that we have so many search engines, but then again is it too many? With all the different information we are fed, who’s to know what is true and what is just made up junk? The computer lab idea is pretty clever. Having a librarian show students how to navigate the universities online catalog of journals and databases would be very helpful to students, especially those seeking credible information. The information literacy program sounds like a smart idea for colleges to start applying. Perhaps if more universities used this program, we wouldn’t have such problems. I believe that a library research class should become one of the required basic studies classes for students. This way, they can learn the basic skills of research technique, and will be able to apply that to their future studies. I am a senior this year, about to graduate, and am just now learning all the ways to access useful research information. If I had learned this early on in my college career, it would have been much smoother sailing.