The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.1332 Tuesday, 22 June 2004
From: Richard Burt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Monday, 21 Jun 2004 09:27:45 -0400
Subject: "Old Search Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World"
Though the article below does not bear on Shakespeare directly, it is of
general interest to educators and researchers.
Best,
Richard
Old Search Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World
June 21, 2004
By KATIE HAFNER
SAN FRANCISCO, June 20 - Katarina Maxianova, who received her bachelor's
degree in comparative literature from Columbia University in May, took a
seminar last year in which the professor assigned two articles from New
Left Review magazine. She found one immediately through Google; for the
other, she had to trek to the library stacks.
"Everyone in class tried to get those articles online," she said, "and
some people didn't even bother to go to the stacks when they couldn't
Google them."
For the last few years, librarians have increasingly seen people use
online search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace
them. Yet only recently have librarians stopped lamenting the trend and
started working to close the gap between traditional scholarly research
and the incomplete, often random results of a Google search.
"We can't pretend people will go back to walking into a library and
talking to a reference librarian," said Kate Wittenberg, director of the
Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia University.
Ms. Wittenberg's group recently finished a three-year study of research
habits, including surveys of 1,233 students across the country, that
concluded that electronic resources have become the main tool for
information gathering, particularly among undergraduates.
[ . . . ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/technology/
21LIBR.html?ex=1088824505&ei=1&en=782913802255041e
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