Reading Assignment #4

The fourth reading assignment given to us was about the situation with students and the online databases offered at universities.  Steven Bell, the author, discusses issues and solutions to these problems that have arisen since Google was created.  Many students still use Google as their major source of information when doing research of any kind, whether it is for a paper, or for a project.  

The article describes using Google as a form of infobesity, the excessive amount of information returned from a search on a topic, that may not even be relevant to the topic someone searched for.  It states that students need to change this and start going on an infodiet, using the aggregator databases offered at the universities.  The reason for students not using the databases offered to them by the university library according to the article is because of the difficulty of the databases.  Most students either do not know, do not want to know, or just do not care about how to use library databases, when they can simply Google something and get instant results, no matter how relevant the results are.  

Steven Bell states that the solution to this is to make the aggregator databases from the library as simple as Google.  Most students today seem to want results right away without having to figure out a new search engine or database, so by making it more like Google, this could help boost the use of these databases.  However, the problem that has occurred is that the companies who own these databases are more focused on the amount of information their database has, so they can appeal to more libraries, rather than the ease of the database, so they can appeal to more students.  Money is the only concern for database companies, which is the reason they have not attempted to make their search engines any easier.  

Another solution that Bell suggested is that faculty must be more involved with the students using the libraries databases forcing them to use it when doing a research project or paper.  If the faculty requires this of students, this could also help boost the use of the databases.

The article brought up really good points and could not have been any more right.  Students already have a large amount of work to contend with throughout the year, and with the free time they do have, they do not feel like having to learn how to use an entire new search engine that is more difficult to use than Google.  As long as the databases the libraries use are as complicated as they are, students will continue to neglect it and go with Google.  Another issue that needs to be addressed, that the article did not discuss, is the advertisement of these databases that the library offers.  Many students do not realize that the library offers these databases for free to students, and it is not highly advertised around campus or in the library.  If it is advertised more, students would have more knowledge of it and probably be more prone to use it.