Reading Report #4

The article, “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing Alternative to Google” was quite an enjoyable read, as I could easily relate to many of the points discussed in this work.   Through reading this article, I learned a lot about myself, as many of the reasons mentioned in the article for students choosing search engines like Google over library databases, are many of the same reasons why I also admit to doing this.  As mentioned in the article, the amount of students using library databases over Google is very slim because it is fast, simple to use, and mainly because it entails very little thought or effort in the process.  Although it may be disappointing to witness students taking the easy way out, the reality of the situation is that students are most likely going to choose the method of research that takes less critical thought and gets them the fastest answer.  With this being true, I completely agree with this article in that we should find a good medium between the high quality library databases and the simplicity of search engines so that students can get the best of both worlds.  

I appreciated the author’s humorous use of wordage in this article such as the words infodiet and infobesity and also the way in which he compared Google to the widely known term “supersize it.”  I found it very clever how the author used this comparison to describe to readers that supersizing in reference to food is very similar to the idea of Google being the supersized version of library databases, where it displays an excess amount of results, many times even results that are not relevant to the topic typed in the search bar.  I do agree with the article in that students should use library catalogs much more frequently than they do but many times it is more convenient to use search engines, which I am guilty of.  The suggestion made by the author that teachers should require their students to use a certain amount of databases in research papers for their class is a great idea because that way, students will become more familiar and more comfortable with these library catalogs, and maybe want to use them more often, even when they don’t have to.