Reading Response #5

“Information Technology 101” by Andrea Foster was an interesting article. It mainly concentrates on how college students are very adapt at using technology, but not necessarily as it pertains to valid and reliable research techniques. Students are overwhelmed by the simple vastness of the information available both online and compiled on library shelves. Librarians and Universities are now challenged to inform students and make sure they understand how to conduct research in this new digital age. I think this article was very on point, students do rely on Google and other free search engines more than they should when they really need to be looking for scholarly journals and other more reliable forms of research. We, as students have access to tons of databases and scholarly journals through our campus library, we have the option of inter-library loan. We have all these options to find lots of information that is going to be more reliable than most of what we can find on Google or Yahoo, but the problem is we are lazy. There I said it! We don’t want to have to bother trying to get to the databases, through all the passwords and usernames, and we don’t want to actually go to the library, when we can hop on our laptops real quick and find out almost exactly what we need to know within seconds. There is a problem with that though, you have to ask yourself how reliable the information you are getting is. It may take more effort to get to the databases and scholarly journals, but the information you get will be a higher caliber and worth the effort.