• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "As You Like It in the Classroom"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "The Murder of Gonzago"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.1332  Tuesday, 22 June 2004

From:           Richard Burt <rburt@english.ufl.edu>
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


_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.

• Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "As You Like It in the Classroom"
• Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "The Murder of Gonzago"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]