Now your comments are quite contrary to the very nature of blog commentary altogether [twopointophia, I suppose], because the entire world of twopointohpia is founded upon the idea of people ranting on the Internet as a lifestyle.

If the world did indeed get a life, blogging itself would fundamentally cease. Your point of view fails to see that such blog commenting very well IS a part of a life and it suits me just fine!!

I observed throughout my academic career a large crowd heavily invested in apathetic silence. This is to say, a large number of students who were content to go to class and say nothing because by doing so the professor could get through the material faster. The quicker the material was finished, the sooner they could go home. In this day and age I find apathetic silence unacceptable, particularly in a venue where discussion is vital to the development of wisdom. If you don’t want to be here, you are free to be somewhere else; or read my comments, you are free to not read them!

There aren’t any monopolies here int eh comentary section!!

I tired so hard to make a reply in the short and concise manner loved by our society of lazy blog readers, but alas you disagree with my terse language. So let me explain this to you in a more elaborate manner!

I have been shown to be wrong on my original assertion. does that mean I will leave? Nope.

And if I am still here, then my long posts will also not be going away. Hence the second Nope.

Now as for the Yep, I have indeed thought about creating my own blog. After a couple months of diliberation I have decided that in the subject of library science cyberscape is already far overpopulated as it is with librarians blogging on to their own drums. So I save all of us a lot of time and energy by containing the discussion to this space and feel that is the most productive manner in handling this whole blogging situation.

Afterall, here I have learned why we still need reference desks. Alas, it is due to the welfare nature of our national socialist party. But we still need them, and thus there will still be a place left to employ librarians – for the time being. So why on earth would I leave if there is not still room to grow – for all of us? So in reference to the last Nope, I precluded that Untethered had left the unstated rhetorical question, “why don’t you go blog about libraries.”

I do have blogs on subjects other than library science. Arizona Kaolin, for example, is mine. I had to put that work somewhere, so I put it up. I don’t know if I will add more to that blog as at this point my interests have rotated into another field of interest. Perhaps someday in the future I will, if I write something that should see more light then the light of day on my laptop.

Imposter, your behavior on the other hand, however, is counterproductive. Apologize and move on.

I tired so hard to make a reply in the short and concise manner loved by our society of lazy blog readers, but alas you disagree with my terse language. So let me explain this to you in a more elaborate manner!

I have been shown to be wrong on my original assertion. does that mean I will leave? Nope.

And if I am still here, then my long posts will also not be going away. Hence the second Nope.

Now as for the Yep, I have indeed thought about creating my own blog. After a couple months of diliberation I have decided that in the subject of library science cyberscape is already far overpopulated as it is with librarians blogging on to their own drums. So I save all of us a lot of time and energy by containing the discussion to this space and feel that is the most productive manner in handling this whole blogging situation.

Afterall, here I have learned why we still need reference desks. Alas, it is due to the welfare nature of our national socialist party. But we still need them, and thus there will still be a place left to employ librarians – for the time being. So why on earth would I leave if there is not still room to grow – for all of us? So in reference to the last Nope, I precluded that Untethered had left the unstated rhetorical question, “why don’t you go blog about libraries.”

I do have blogs on subjects other than library science. Arizona Kaolin, for example, is mine. I had to put that work somewhere, so I put it up. I don’t know if I will add more to that blog as at this point my interests have rotated into another field of interest. Perhaps someday in the future I will, if I write something that should see more light then the light of day on my laptop.

Imposter, your behavior on the other hand, however, is counterproductive. Apologize and move on.

The biggest challenge approachig the near future is the digital divide becasue more assignements will be requestedin typed format. Penmanship is going to disappear as I recognize they finally gave up with me and put me on a computer. All problems solved!

One really great class I took in highschool was a computer tech course that was essentially the microsoft office tutorial books for word, excell, powerpoint and access. My competency with microsoft products since does show versus those who have not gone through such courses.

I learned Interent Explorer entirely on my own because it is that simple to use. This includes things like changing the settings so the computer will accept cookies or block certian levels of content. Now when I was a kid everybody raved about Yahoo search or MSN search or Momma Search. I don’t know why, but the second I knew about google, it was the only search engine I used from that point onwards. I really liked the blank clean homepage with one little textbox because search really is that simple!

It really isn’t the teachers who are failing at teaching these skills. These skills are best impressed between 3 and 6, and it is often the parents who are not fulfilling their role while helping their kids with homework. Either the parent has no patience, and thus simply gives the kids all the answers, or feels too much sympathy for the child or watching the child agonize over the problems. And third, of course, the parent simply “doesn’t ever have time” to help their kids with homework by simply being present and offering encouragement to try again or to re-read the instructions one more time.

Research skills really aren’t soley contained by academia, although academia makes a lot of use of them. Really good execises for teaching research skills include giving the kids the pile of food ads and asking them to find the best sales price on milk or apples or peaches or asking htem why only some fruit is on sale and others aren’t. I suppose a fair amount of my learning came to me because I was actively watching my parents go about their daily routine which included things like going through the food ads. I should also mention I picked up the newspaper and started reading it around first grade; my favorite section was a column on the Editorial page by a person who was a terrific writer; he died while I was in junior high or so. And quite incidentally enough, all the advice columnists had died before I finished my second year of college as well.

Somehow my parents made my intellectually curious about the world where a welfare state could never satiate may appetite for knowledge. But I recognize that for many people, they do not want to think becasue it is simply too hard to do such things.

Thus, as long as there is Welfare, there will be Reference Desks in libraries! Let us be honest with each other about welfare: there are times when some poepl genuinely need assistance. The vast majority, however, are simply accustomed to being enabled by their help to live out a lazy lifestyle.

I probably will never be a very good general referenc librarian, but I have excelled in corporate and academic research. My next stop however is with a company with unmatched benefits and unmatched pay and unmatched security compared to All other potential employers in the arena. Lets just say I got tired of getting paid too little for work that fell too far below my true capabilities!

If we can teach research skills early on (and they stick) then I do see a lack of need for the ref desk. However, it is really the teachers and professors who are needed to help make the skills stick with assignments or projects that require the use of research skills. Questions for Mr. Kat: do you see the need for computer classes in K-12 education? Couldn’t students just learn it on their own?

For instance, I started playing an MMORPG a couple weeks ago because someone said I should try it out. The first thing I did was read the instructions on the screen in the box that included the little “play game” button. I noticed there was an online forum attached to the game so I looked at that as well and discovered in that place an FAQ with literally every piece of information about the game in plain sight. In this particular game there were no less then a couple thousand people on the network at anyone time and the chat box was constantly filled with simple questions that were primarily answered on that window and in the rest of the game interface as every screen is prefaced with an information help sheet.

But people don’t WANT to read instructions; they WANT someone else to tell them the answer for them.

I found this answer in all places by mentoring a fifth grader and a first grader. The fifth grader is phenomenal; when he asks a question, it is clear he has read the instructions and he needs clarification of a wording or he simply doesn’t know how to do the problem yet. Show him the operation once [fractions, long division, etc] and he has the operation down form that point forth. And he has been like this since he was a very small toddler. Nobody really taught him information literacy; he figured it out for himself.

The first grader is in stark contrast to this fifth grader. She looks at her homework for one second and then yells out “I NEED HELP!!!” despite the fact that she can read the words if she puts in the effort and if she read the words she would know how to do her homework. The truth is, she doesn’t want to put in the effort; she wants someone else to read it for her and even better yet she wants someone to just give her the answers. And as long as people give her the answers she will not learn information literacy because she doesn’t have to.

As the old saying goes, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for the rest of his life. Give a man a fish and put him on welfare for the rest of his life. I don’t think our problem is teaching others where or how to look to find information. Our challenge is teaching our patrons TO LOOK for information and in particular to read the instructions!

Most of my professors were the “teach a man to fish” type. Take a guess which type of students ended up working in their labs!

I’m convinced though. There will always be a need for reference librarians because a large majority of people are either too dumb to look for the information themselves or too smart to do what they know someone else will do for them if they only ask! But then I suppose this makes libaries part of the welfare network; no wonder most library workers almost qualify for food stamps and funding remains so low!