Tuesday, December 18, 2012

End of Semester Rejoicing

Oh, I miss you, Blog! I miss you, readers!

I miss lazy evenings of leisurely activities and reading for fun!

Happily, I get a couple weeks off until my next two classes begin the second week of January. I'm hoping to get ahead on blog post writing so I will be able to post more consistently in the new year.

My classes this semester really flew by; I kept feeling like I had just started! I learned a lot, however and am happy I made the decision to start.

Even the information technologies class wasn't too bad. Although I did have hours of work each night that would have me tearing my hair out. But what a feeling of satisfaction when I finally figured something out! Finally finishing a difficult assignment would have me heartily congratulating myself aloud. This would also make up for all the yelling I had done at myself previously. Well, yelling at myself and my computer.

A n y w a y... I thought I should share some books I read this semester with you all. I did a LOT of reading, not only books but ebooks and journal articles galore. I will definitely miss all the online resources I have access to now when I graduate. It's amazing to attend a school that has so much money to put into their library.

I read books on copyright, on Google, on computers, on digitization...these below are the two I most enjoyed and am most likely to read again.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick: Whew, talk about information overload! This is a history of information, including the written word, computers, and everything in between. I love history, so this was fascinating.

Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room is the Room by David Weinberger: Cool book! All about how information has changed since the internet. Gave me lots of food for thought and new ways to think about online information.

Done with school! ...until January 7th.



2 comments:

Mark Allman said...

I was wondering the other day if we are letting our minds go soft. Are we not getting the most out of our capacity to think and reason. The reason I ask is we do not have to commit first to learning something and second to remembering it because we think the information is at our finger tips in a moments notice. It seems to me this easy access could lead us to slacking off and not trying to learn something in and out. Our fall back has become....
"I'll look it up". What do you think.

Laura said...

Oh yes we've gotten lazier! Of course, I grew up in the digital age, so using Google is second nature to me. Being younger, my perspective on this is probably off. It's true, though, easier access to information means less work.

Something I work on with my library patrons who need help on computers is sifting the reliable information from the sketchy. Just because we have access to so much online, doesn't mean it's all trustworthy. So in a way, we have to work harder to find the best information since we have access to so much.