Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The Internet: Curse or Blessing?

A lot of what we have talked about in class so far has been about the negative and positive aspects in using the internet. Many people are nostalgic and adamant about "the good old days" before the internet being better, and our generation being flawed. In Boyd's Chapter "Researching Cybercultures" she brings up a very valid point: the internet has become overwhelming and searching through it has become a task in itself. Although I agree - searching for articles for research isn't easy and search engines don't always discriminate well - I also think this allows us to explore. We have huge access to amounts of information that wasn't always found at libraries. Sure, librarians can catalog and probably help you find something more specific to a topic than Google might be able to. But there are certain things you can't research so easily.

Take some examples:

Say there is a boy in small town Alabama, who is struggling with his sexuality and has no information on what this may mean in a larger context, or no examples to follow. The Internet has many articles about gay rights, other people to relate to who are gay, or could probably even answer some of his questions. But he wouldn't have been able to find those answers circa 1950 in a library.

Say someone is doing a project on human trafficking in the US. There are SO many more articles, news stories, hotlines, organizations, and tips online than in a library. There is some information a library can't provide you with (say a hotline to NHTRC - national human trafficking resource center - which by the way is 888-373-7888 & if you are interested in this topic I am passionate about it and would love to talk about it for DAYS.)

So yes, there is a lot of clutter. There are projects for school where utilizing librarians would probably be a better idea than consulting Google. The internet is full of crap. Yes. But it is also filled with research, information, and guidance for those issues and questions we have that we can't find in a library. Today, part of librarians job now includes helping students navigate through the clutter. But is it THAT big of a deal, that we'd want to sacrifice all the other information we have gained and go back to having only libraries at our disposal? I think it's worth the time and energy to search through the clutter than to give up a whole world of knowledge.

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