Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google

As an English major at UNCW, I find it very difficult to believe that there are college students who actually believe that they do not need the library or any of its resources. In the four years that I have been a student, it seems that I have spent at least half of that time in Randall Library or on the library's website reading, researching, printing, copying, re-reading, re-researching...

In the article, "Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google," the author uses bad dieting as an analogy for the bad researching college students are resorting to. He refers to James Morris, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, who "coined the term 'infobesity,' which nicely describes the outcome of Google-izing [allusion to Supersizing] research: a junk-information diet, consisting of overwhelming amounts of low-quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers of equally low quality." Naturally, the cure for "infobesity" is "infodieting."

In the article, the author discusses whether or not libraries and databases should modify their search engines to imitate Google's format. He claims that while at first he was in disagreement with this idea, he is now an advocate for it. I feel conflicted about the issue. It would be far more convenient to work with library catalogs and other databases that were consistent with one another instead of learning and re-learning how to use each database; however, should it really be made so easy? Isn't college supposed to be a challenge? Aren't we supposed to be LEARNING HOW TO LEARN?

I am disappointed that my generation of college students portrayed in this article is not being up to the task of learning how to use the materials that can help them get the information they need; information that is truly useful and applicable. While this may be true of many students, I know few who have discarded the library's resources. Perhaps it is because I am in the English department and am therefore around many other people who feel the same way I do about books, research and reading. The professors in the English department, I believe, instilled that in their students. Since declaring my major, I have not written a single research paper without a required number of "scholarly sources," and a limited number of "other sources." I think the professors in the English department have set an admirable example and standard for all professors. At the end of my senior seminar last semester, I wrote a twenty-some page research paper which did not include a single non-scholarly source, which was not a requirement, just a result of my own appreciation for "digestable, high nutrition information."

Don't get me wrong, though. I love Google just as much as anyone. As a matter a fact, I use it on a daily basis -- literally. But I think its important to know when to use it and when its just not quite up to par.