Re: [Web4lib] Google is “white bread for the mind"

[Karen Harker]

This article is yet another example of how the public just doesn't
understand the relationship of libraries and the Internet.  Where is it
ever mentioned of the quality online resources that are ONLY available
via libraries (what private home has a subscription to literary
resources)?  The debate continues to be focused on books (and, by
extension, the library) vs. Google/Wikipedia.  
 
"With libraries in decline, diminishing stocks of books and fewer
librarians, media platforms such as Google made perfect sense."  I'm
confused...is then an English phenomenon? Because most of what I read is
that libraries are doing just fine, thank you very much. In fact, many
are booming with increased usage and collections.  
 
Additionally, would Prof B. object to digitized copies of the "200
extracts from peer-reviewed printed texts at the beginning of the year,
supplemented by printed extracts from eight to nine texts for individual
pieces of work. "  Apparently so: “I want students to experience the
pages and the print as much as the digitisation and the pixels - both
are fine but I want students to have both – not one or the other, not a
cheap solution,” she said.  (Cheap?)
 
Finally, I still do not understand the abhorrence to Wikipedia given
Nature's article that compared it favorably with Encyclopedia
Brittanica.  While I understand that there were some accusations of poor
design, this is not likely to explain all of the limited differences. 
NOTE: this was not mentioned in article at all (only in the editorial). 
All this article mentioned was Larry Sanger's quote.  
 
 
 
Karen R. Harker, MLS, MPH
UT Southwestern Medical Library
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX  75390-9049
214-648-8946
Yahoo IM: karenharker 

>>> On 1/16/08 at 10:14 AM, in message
<504200181.20080116091424 at riverofdata.com>, Dan Lester
<dan at riverofdata.com> wrote:
And just how does she propose to keep them from using these tools?

She'll magically keep them from using WP and then following links from
it to other sources?

She'll magically keep them from using Google?  So is Yahoo ok?

And this is a professor of MEDIA STUDIES?  So they're going to avoid
key tools in a key medium?

And she says:
"But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious,
refereed work
or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and
fleeting commitments."

And she's not going to TEACH them how to determine what is good, bad
or indifferent?  Does she teach that regarding "traditional sources"?

What is totally off base here is her ideas, and just as strange is
that this made THE Times.  (Not just the NY Times, but THE Times)

dan


Wednesday, January 16, 2008, 7:45:58 AM, you wrote:

>   "Google is 'white bread for the mind', and the internet is
producing a generation of
> students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor
of media studies
> will claim this week...Her own students are banned from using
Wikipedia or Google as
> research tools in their first year of study".
>    
>   Full text:
>    
>  
>
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3182091.ece





-- 
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr. 
Dan Lester, Boise, ID  


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