Too Much Information

Is it possible to have too much information? 

Yesterday, my wife taught a second grade class about George Washington Carver, the scientist and inventor who found about 100 uses for peanuts, soybeans, and sweet potatoes.  She asked the class how they thought Carver could have found so many applications.  

"He googled it," one child replied. 

The class agreed with this sensible answer.  Never mind that Carver died in 1943, and Google began in 1996.

The internet has changed the way people find information so much that it can be difficult for young people to imagine a time when we did not conduct all our research with computers and other electronic devices. 

A study called “Finding Context:  What Today’s College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age” by Alison J. Head, Ph.D., and Michael B. Eisenberg, Ph.D. (http://www.libraryng.com/sites/libraryng.com/files/PIL_ProgressReport_2_2009.pdf) examines how today's college students conduct research.  The paper finds, “Research seems to be far more difficult to conduct in the digital age than it did in previous times.”  Does this make sense?  Shouldn’t the fact that people can get so much information through the internet and electronic databases make it easier for people to research?

You may have heard of information overload, the problem that occurs when people have so much information that they become confused.  Try searching for information online.  You can search for information on Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines and receive hundreds of millions of hits, or results.  Perhaps all you need or want is one good source that has the information.  Choosing the best, most accurate, and most relevant hits can be tricky business. 

IHE Library News has a few blog entries that can help you, such as “Evaluating Websites” (http://ihelib.blogspot.com/2012/01/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none.html), “Something to Remember When Using the Internet” (http://ihelib.blogspot.com/2012/01/something-to-remember-when-using.html), and “What’s Wrong with this Website?” (http://ihelib.blogspot.com/2012/01/whats-wrong-with-these-websites.html).

Of course, if you still have questions about finding information on the web, you probably know whom you can ask.  If you don’t know, take a tip from one of my favorite living authors, Neil Gaiman:

(Retrieved February 8, 2012, from http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/08/20/well-said-neil-gaiman/)

 This is a photograph of a quotation in the carpet of the Gungahlin Public Library in Canberra, Australia.  Gaiman's website is at http://www.neilgaiman.com/.  If you can't see the picture, the quotation reads, "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one."