Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Bibliophile's Nightmare

I'm beginning to believe that technology will truly be the downfall of civilization as we know it. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally as techy as the next 46-year-old woman; I own an Ipod, a netbook, a smart phone, and an e-reader. But last week opened my eyes to the pitfalls of too much electronic information. You see, last week my student teacher and I accompanied all five English classes to the library to complete a short research assignment. (Mind you, we completed the long research project first semester; this is just review heading into the end of the year.) Before our scheduled days, Meg (the student teacher), reviewed source cards and note cards with the kiddies. Much to her (and my) dismay, several students in each class enquired, "What's a call number?" when she pointed out the elements of a source card drawn on the board. (Wait - it gets better.) When Meg explained that a call number is the series of letters and numbers on the spine of a book identifying its placement on the library shelves, one kid said - and I quote - "What's the spine of a book?" Ultimately it took showing the kids a library book to explain a call number and its use. "I read everything on line," was the standard response upon questioning this serious gap in knowledge.

Alas, that seems to be true for many of the students, since my consternation only deepened after spending two days in the library with the freshmen (in particular, though the juniors weren't much better). When another teacher and I designed the previous research project we allowed students to use online resources which are plentiful and excellent since our district subscribes to a number of databases and services. At the time, we did not require them to use print sources because many of ours are out of date and students were researching current issues. Thus we decided that this little essay - which is about Elizabethan England - should include print sources only to give the kids some practice citing them using MLA format. Little did we know that the challenge for the cherubs would not be how to cite the sources, but rather how to find and use them.

When our classes arrived in the library (now-a-days referred to as a "media center") our specialist (an extremely nice lady who is paid hourly to mind the media center since all the certified librarians were axed in budget cuts two years ago) had kindly pulled some resources for the kids. She (and I and Meg) explained to them, however, that more books were on the shelf and that the reference section in particular held many treasures dealing with the Elizabethan period. So...immediately the students made mad grabs for the books on the cart (because they either couldn't be bothered or didn't know how to locate other sources) and whined (loudly) when they couldn't find the specific information being sought. One boy, in particular, was adamant that his topic (life at court) wasn't in any of the books.
"Mrs. Medlock," he simpered. "My topic is too hard. There's nothing here."
"Where did you look?" I asked.
"Everywhere!" he pouted, as I picked up a large, glossy book entitled Life in Renaissance England.
"Did you try this one?" I replied.
"Yes!" he nodded vigorously.
"Show me," I said, handing him the book.
"Show you what?"
"Show me where you looked in there." (I suppose I should point out that I already knew some of the information he sought was in this book since I had helped a student in an earlier hour with the same topic.) The boy flipped open the book and began quickly leafing through it trying to scan the page headings as he went. "See!" he ended triumphantly, as if he had outsmarted both me and the book.
"Did you try the index?" I asked.
"The table of contents doesn't have anything listed. It's done in sections by decade," he answered.
"O.K.," I said. "But did you look at the index?"
"What's an index?" he asked seemingly bewildered that there might be some way to find information in a book other than looking at every page. After I had similar exchanges with several students throughout the day, I decided a mini-lesson on the parts of a book was in order. This did seem to help some, but a few kids acted like the whole idea was useless information because they could just Google the topic and come up with hundreds of websites. Unfortunately, trying to explain to them that Joe Blow's take on Queen Elizabeth I may or may not be accurate is like talking to a brick wall. They seem to have this deep-seated idea that everything they read on the internet must be true. (Of course, some local libraries aren't helping our cause at all. For example, the Queen Creek branch of the Maricopa County Library doesn't even have call numbers on the books. They are arranged in sections by general topics or types so people can just browse through them instead of locating a specific book in the catalog. This layout is supposed to be "friendlier" to library patrons.)

By the end of the last week Meg and I were ready to beat our heads against the wall. I'm not sure what she did over the weekend, but it took me a couple of martinis and a good book - one actually printed on paper - to regain some semblance of sanity.

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