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February 26, 2009
Information Overload - Journalism and Libraries
It’s not just librarians who are dealing with helping people maneuver through Information overload. Librarians, however will be some of the first people to recognize the dilemmas Bree Nordenson talks about in her recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Overload! Journalism’s Battle for relevance in an age of too much information.
Nordenson reviews a study released last summer by The Associated Press, A new model for news: studying the deep structure of young-adult news consumption and much, if not all of what she says applies to academic libraries and information literacy. Librarians are very familiar with information overload and how it affects young people in the 18-24 age bracket, which is the subject of this AP report. You may even be finding yourself in the grip of information overload. Did you really think you could check your e-mail, facebook, twitter, and catch up with your RSS feeds, while watching something from Hulu? Don’t think you’re developing Alzheimer’s. Your brain is overflowing. According to Torkel Klinberg, author of The overflowing brain: information overload and the limits of working memory we have reached the stage where, “The stone age brain meets the information flood,” and our brains are short-circuiting.
This same thing happens to young people when they are trying to find news. They have too many choices and experience “news fatigue.” The AP study also found that being able to deliver news faster does not always equate to better serving those interested in the news. News that is delivered quickly does not allow for any in-depth analysis, background or context. Fast news ends up being a series of headlines which are repeated throughout the day or held until the end of a TV news broadcast as a teaser to gain audience share. Young people from this study were frustrated by not being able to gain substantive news.
Students also experience library fatigue and I can see it coming on with questions like these.
• There are so many databases in Search Tools to consider. Which one is the best one?
• I’m exhausted. This database is good enough. Do I really need to choose between 15 databases for this 15 page paper?
• Why do I have to look for books in Mirlyn but look for articles someplace else? Google lets me find both books and articles together.
• Search Tools Quick Search? Hello! It is so user unfriendly!
• I keep clicking and clicking and end up with very little. Can’t it be easier?
VuFind will help consolidate research but more and more seems to be showing up on Google or Google Scholar and what's showing up is easier to find and can be linked back to library resources. If libraries don’t solve these frustration factors quickly we will lose our users.
Time + Information = Knowledge
Based on this equation, as information becomes more pervasive time can’t keep up so knowledge suffers. In order for library services to survive we must consider the findings from the AP report and realize that more information does not necessarily mean research will be better. Students are fickle. If VuFind doesn’t offer them the research options they are currently getting from Google there will be no need for them to replace it with library databases.
Posted by swortman at February 26, 2009 10:42 AM