There are times when I realize that I’m a product of the semi-online-literate generation but also how very, very much I love the Internet. The former hit me when it took me this long to realize that instead of printing off the chart for my latest IST 605 reference exercise and then taking notes on it to type up, like I did with the last exercise, I could, you know, just bring my laptop along. In all fairness, it’s been some time both since I’ve been a student and since I’ve owned a laptop, and I have taken laptop notes in libraries in the past, but still…how many weeks into the course is it?!
Secondly…how joyous to be able to just click on my library’s wifi network and be online in an instant, with access to my class page and a zillion (that’s scientifically calculated, mind you) resources.
I do love, though, that I’m also able to peruse stacks with ease and find where a reference book is. According to J, the reference librarian that I interviewed for this same class, kids of the current generation frequently struggle to do that because it’s simply not part of the literacy skill set that they’ve learned, what with so much being just a few keystrokes away.
