Oh boy!

A friend of mine called me today frustrated with her information retrieval troubles. She was upset that while trying to access specific journals and the articles within, a series of mouse clicks were necessary. She asked, "isn't there a faster way?"

Some thoughts on Dervin's Ten Myths

Reading over the Top Ten Myths listed in my last post, I couldn't help but have a couple of "aha" moments.

#2 (More information is always better) is a great one. Especially for me! I have this awful tendency to over research. I once had this 4 paged paper to write but my draft of collected quotations and paraphrases from the research I had compiled was 10 pages long. Ouf!

#4 (Information can only be acquired through formal sources) is quite pertinent in this day and age when we have access to so much informal information. It's always existed, but now it exists at our finger tips and in abundance. The use of our sources such as Wikipedia used to aggravate me; however, now I realize that it can be used as a great first step when feeling a bit clueless. Of course, I would never use the source as the cited source, but as a stepping stone to more credible info, yea, sure. I use Google in the same manner, as do many, I'm sure.

Let's see . . . lastly #8 (Functional units of information, such as books . . . always fit the needs of individuals). Last weekend, while at the reference desk, a patron wanted a sort of rubric that would help her define certain aspects of articles for a literature review that she was doing. The librarian and I found a few sources, but then, we sat around compiling some important fields of our own with the patron. The librarian laughed and said, "I bet you didn't think your answer would be in the form of a brainstorming session with the reference desk, did you?"

That's all for now.