Currently, I have a 1.5″ binder that is jammed packed with articles that are assigned in one class. If I were pro-active, this binder would have been completed and sorted at the beginning of the semester over than half-way through but I am the queen of procrastination (or suck at time management, take your pick).
As I was reading the this weeks homework for that class tonight, the assigned article is about indexing as a cottage industry, I found myself surprised by the author discussing the “probability of indexing the Internet” which made me go back to the beginning of the article and look at the date — 1996. My notes in the margin? “Google? Yahoo?”
While I’ve been woefully behind in keeping the day to day (or week to week) stuff of my first semester of lib school documented as well as I would have liked, one thing that has struck me since the beginning of the program is that some of the information that is parsed to us as teaching tools is woefully out of date. I don’t mean in age, per se, but in content of the information being given. In the computer competencies class that I’m taken, the book (current, dated 2008) is incorrect about various technologies as well as gives too much information on things that for the lay person, may seem to be over wrought. I’m trying to figure out why a librarian will need to know what EEPROM is, but apparently this information is necessary for dissemination.
Referring back to the article from 1996, yes it does give a good overview of what indexing is and is not but on the flip side, how much are we to take away from this over what has changed in the last 12 years? By this I mean that clearly there has been much advancement in the field of librarianship that would warrant more current and perhaps more timely piece then something that is so aged?
I find this to be a circular argument within myself in that as someone coming into the program with such a heavy technical background, perhaps I’m jumping the gun on these topics but on the other hand, it is not like my professors are not technically savvy or incompetent — they are, in fact, neither. It just seems irksome that so many of my professors seem stuck in older information while new information arrives daily. THIS is what I do not get.
For now, I am going to go mull this over a bit more and will return with a more complete update soon, I promise.
30 something. Punk rock librarian and archivist. Sassy. Waffle. Pug owner. World traveler. Pierced.
Tattooed. Tall. Music and book lover. Discriminating Guinness tasters. Aging, alternative hipster. Eco-conscious. Geek. Equally in love with James Bond and Jane Austen.
One of things I did immediately after graduating from university was to destroy most of my textbooks and all of my course notes. I did this primarily as a symbolic action. My parents were furious and my friends were bemused.
Little did I know then that I now work in an industry (web design and software engineering) that bears almost no relevance to my degree (microelectronic systems engineering), using technology and techniques that didn’t exist back then, even though much of what was taught was cutting edge stuff. Moreover, even within the last three years, everything in this industry has changed dramatically. Not just its implementations but many principles too.
A few months ago I dumped almost all of the technical books I used in my job (dozens), leaving just eight – and most of those are beginning to date too.
Everything we need to know now and that which is up to date and relevant can be found on the internet. That’s why RSS feeds are important and I consume around 120 of them daily in order to be kept informed of new things. I have to, otherwise I miss out on opportunities.
Learning from old practices and articles gives relevance to what follows, although it’s sad to see teachers stuck in the past. Maybe there is intention behind this – can you find out?
Few of my friends and none of my business clients know how to research online. My flippant response to many queries is this: “Google is your friend.” But even armed with this knowledge, they don’t know how to search, nor do they know how to filter and aggregate the responses they receive. To me, that should be one core aim of future librarians.