Reading Report # 4

"The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google"
By: Steven J Bell

The article begins by discussing how students today are becoming more and more dependent on search engines such as Google and are not taking advantage of the resources libraries have such as databases. The article then talks about how more and more students are not able to understand the scholarly information in things like databases and are not willing to search and dig for the information they need. The article says that students want fast, easy and most of the time junk information. The term coined for this type of information in infobesity. Then it goes on to talk about how some believe that search engines should be easier for students to use because some current interfaces are extremely difficult to understand. For example their interfaces should appear like search engines such as Google. Finally the article discusses some experiments that have been done and wrap up by saying that the experiments show that databases should be more like search engines but need to get more sophisticated software so that it produces better and more relevant results.

I think that this article discusses many relevant issues. I believe that it is a serious problem that students today don’t know how to use and access information in libraries. It is even more absurd that students don’t even know that a library is available on their campus. However I do agree that it can be extremely difficult to navigate databases and sifting through it all is very time consuming. I truly believe that if database publishers made it easier to use than more would take advantage of them. I know that some people think that research shouldn’t be easy and that things shouldn’t be changed to make it more convent and less difficult but times change and databases need to adapt to those changes.