Reading Responce #3

Kimberly Rhine
LIB 103
Ms. Pemberton
Ms. Cody

Reading #3

Bell, Steven. “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer An Appetizing Alternative To Google.” Chronicles of Higher Education Vol. 50, 24 (2/20/2004).

When ever I am in a time of need or don’t know an answer to a question my typical response is, “I don’t know…Google it.” This article talks about how that statement right there is what they are trying to fight. In the article they talk about how libraries offer more information regarding our subject topic and the information you find in the library is always accurate while the sites that come up on Google may inaccurate or are only displayed because they pay Google to put them up there.
Mr. Bell talks about something that we actually touched on in class. Libraries spend a ridiculous amount of money a year on renewing their subscriptions to academic journals, and much more. These hosts make a crazy amount of money and it is only able to be viewed if you pay for the journals. This enables many students to have better more concise information which we should utilize.
As I stated earlier Google doesn’t always offer sites that really meet the criteria you need. The dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, James Morris has even coined the phrase “infobesity.” This term is talking about how on Google searches you, “receive overwhelmingly amounts of low quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers of equally low quality.” In the article they talk about how they are going to hopefully start to get students to use more sources from the library. The way they are trying to do this is make is less “confusing.” Obviously so if sources are difficult to find in the library and Google is so much easier people are reasonably going to use Google.