Robbins Library Notes

Teaching people how to find information is a big part of what I do as a librarian. Bibliographic instruction and the teaching of information literacy are hot topics that my colleagues and I discuss frequently, and read about in the literature.

Recently, my favorite site for philosophy-related articles — Bookforum.com — listed an article by Monica Hesse from the Washington Post, titled, “Truth: Can You Handle It? Better Yet: Do You Know It When You See It?”

This article caught my attention, and not merely for the obvious philosophical questions about the nature of truth. Why? My interested was piqued because of a question found in the first section of the article:

And all of them get at a big question: For the Google generation, what happens to the concepts of truth and knowledge in a user-generated world of information saturation?

What, indeed, does happen? Does truth, and knowledge with it, fall by the wayside, replaced only with consensus or opinion?

What is the difference between information and knowledge? Hesse offers the following, which I think are good, quick definitions:

Information is about tidbits, crumbs of data. Information can be carried around on a Trivial Pursuit card. Information says, “It’s currently 95 degrees in Anchorage.”

Knowledge is different. Knowledge is about context — about knowing what to do with accumulated information. Knowledge is saying, “Dude, based on what I know of Alaska, it’s never 95 degrees in Anchorage.”

Or, to take a philosophical example: you are writing about the history of atheism, and are curious to learn if philosophers prior to the modern era wrote on the topic, in order to make the point that atheism is, itself, not a recent innovation. In the course of your research, you discover that figures from the classical world, like Lucretius, e.g., did indeed write in such a vein.

Now, the information in this is that Lucretius was an atheist, and this outlook strongly influences his work, De Rerum Natura. Yet, please note well: this is just information. The fact that Lucretius was an atheist says little to nothing in and of itself. Knowledge is the next step. Knowledge is the synthesis of information — which, in this case, means studying this book, placing it within its historical context and classical conceptions of the divine, and not merely making a one-to-one comparison between Lucretius and the contemporary forms of atheism floating about in the world at the present moment. This means more than a quick Google search. This means some serious study and reading.

But, as Hesse goes on to write, students in the Google age are less inclined to consult books, or to even consider going beyond mere information retrieval. What does this mean, for librarians, for teachers, for democracy, for much that we claim to hold dear? Hesse concludes by writing:

There is a lot of information out there. It overwhelms us. It grows at a choking rate.

You wonder: Who is right?

The student who lives online? Or the lame teacher who thinks that books are a necessary component to a well-rounded understanding of how information works?

As students must absorb increasingly more information throughout their education, perhaps expecting them to assess whether it’s true is simply too much. Four errors to Britannica’s three ain’t bad — and probably good enough for the research the average person does on a daily basis.

Yet, I wonder myself: is “good enough” sufficient? That may work when you’re trying to finish your term paper under deadline, with four other papers screaming for attention. But, what happens when our student leaves academia and enters their working life? Does “good enough” still suffice when a project is on the line that may affect others? And what of the functioning of democracy? Is “good enough” sufficient to sort out lies and propaganda from truth? And what about confirmation bias, which Hesse refers to in her article, though not by that term? There is so much information out there, that we often tend to only read that which confirms what we already believe or think we know. What happens to critical thinking, in this case?

In answer to her own argument, Hesse cites one of the teachers whom she interviewed:

Grill, the AP government teacher, listens to this argument thoughtfully before offering one of his own: “The lessons that come through understanding a process should never become a thing of the past,” he says. The question of truth in a user-generated world isn’t about the accuracy of information so much as it is about an appreciation for the intricacies of the search, for understanding that truth can be elusive, but the fight for it can be rewarding.

I agree — and add to it that we need to emphasize that “good enough” isn’t always sufficient.

So, readers, if you’d like to move beyond mere information retrieval to developing knowledge, please let me know so that we can set up a bibliographic instruction session. There is a lot of information out there, and knowledge, too, if you know where and how to look. And faculty — if you’d like to include a bibliographic instruction session as part of your course, please let me know. I can help you with this, so drop me a line if you’re interested.