Infoglut
Leave a commentJanuary 15, 2012 by Brad
SOPA.
DPLA.
Open Access.
These are but three topics that piqued my interest when I dove into the world of LIS. Each topic in itself provides enough info to warrant my attention full-time. I find myself overwhelmed at times by the amount of information out there and can’t shake the feeling that I’m swimming upstream. Far from being a salmon hell bent on mating, I fear I’m being carried away against my will. So I tend to run away to the familiar Land of Sports.
Back in high school I was a book worm and I couldn’t figure out how to reconcile that part of me with the sports loving side of me. So sports were sunk. Whilst in college I got back into sports and my reading floundered. After a while, I got annoyed with the hackneyed responses by the athletes and the fanatical reactions by the, er, well fans. So now I often sit watching the game with a book in my hand. It took many a year for me to learn how to swim in both the sea of sports and the ocean of books but I’ve done it.
Now, though, I spend some time in the Lake of LIS and am having trouble splitting my time in three. So I find my reading of sports stories and blogs giving way to articles and blogs by librarians and other LIS related folk.There’s so much good information that I find myself in a similar situation as Jared from the Hack Library School Blog, that is struggling to feel like I belong.
So, I’ve decided to not focus on every little aspect of LIS, but rather adhere to the “Knowing a lot about a little” school of thought. My advice, if I may be so bold to offer some, to my fellow LIS students is to do the same. Do your reading and those topics that strike your fancy are the ones you should focus on; for enthusiasm goes a long way. Take my Info Organization class for example. I learned quickly that, while interesting, I don’t have what it takes to be a cataloger. Yet, the professor was so passionate about it, that I really got into it myself. I know everyone’s going to have a specialty on which they should focus their energies and that I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed if I come across a topic that I don’t know inside and out and upside down and right side up. After all it’s only natural that a field focused on information will find itself awash in infoglut.
