Internet, Sweet Internet

I am writing my first post ever from home. We finally caved in and got Internet access. I am very excited to be able to post here from home, work on my Web programming skills, check e-mail and weather, and check database links from off-campus.

My double-life as librarian-actress will be over after tonight. I have had so much fun working on this production, which I am very proud to have my small part in. I love all of the people I have worked with, and have enjoyed another venue for getting to know a few students a little better. Working closely with students is one of my favorite things in the world.

On the other hand, I think I have learned once and for all that I am not a person who is capable of working two jobs without my work suffering for it. I have been considering a second, very part-time job, and thought maybe I could handle it this summer. However, I am not one of those people with endless amounts of energy to draw from. I have concentrated very hard this week on taking care of myself so that I could be at my best in two places. As much fun as this play has been, I will be happy to go to work on Monday being able to focus all of my energies onto the things that need to be done before I can leave for Seattle, and putting my all into the two classes I will be teaching this week.

Promiscuous Searchers

I'm reading an article a co-worker gave me that I'm having difficulty understanding. It is called "The information-seeking behaviour of the virtual scholar: from use to users" by David Nicholas. On the third page, it describes one of the traits of online searchers, and that is their promiscuity. I do a lot of online searching, so does that make me promiscuous?

Okay, so this word doesn't have to involve sex. Dictionary.com also has definitions that include without discrimination, haphazard.

Even as a professional researcher, I also do a lot of searching that is haphazard, and I bounce in and out of sites. I'm wondering if this is avoidable on the Internet or within a scholarly database. Even when I am searching for articles, I may get into the abstract page or the article itself, and quickly realize it isn't relevant.

But is this really so different than print? If I am looking in books, I may pull ten books off the shelf, and realize only three are at all relevant.

Does any of this really matter... I guess that's the final question.

Article Ideas

As I'm trying to read about customer service in the Internet age (or whatever you want to call it), I keep coming up with more questions I write in the notes that could possibly be articles in the future, perhaps for other people, assuming they haven't been done yet (I'm not taking the time to find that out).

Students turn to the Internet before coming to the library or even using our digital resources. We keep talking about the convenience factor and our technology developments focus on making research more convenient. I'm also wondering how much literacy is a factor. The information posted on Web sites are often not written by scholars, and are thus much easier for the student to understand. Does a students preference for the readability of Web sites factor into their preference for Internet research vs. the scholarly articles we keep encouraging them to go out and find... many of which we don't understand either?

Okay, maybe this question is not something that interests anyone else, or perhaps there are a thousand articles on this that I just haven't come across.