Exploring a Really Cool Hill

My overall experience in D.H. Hill Library was a rather pleasant one. I learned a lot of new useful information about the library and locations within it, as well as about the library’s websites. For example, the Maker Space will likely be a very helpful place for me to explore in the future and will likely help me with more than one project. Pertaining to this course in particular however, I found the websites to be the most useful tool that we learned about in our time at D.H. Hill. The online catalog is such a helpful tool. Not only is it helpful when searching for a specific book, the amount of filters you can apply make formerly broad searches incredibly detailed. If I have a specific idea in mind, for example biomaterials, I just need to type that into the catalog and 1031 books appear. I can further narrow my search by the seemingly endless number of filters on the sidebar. Furthermore, if I find a book that is absolutely perfect for my research topic, but happens to be at some other library, I can still request it and the book will appear on campus within a few days for me to check out.

The size of the library was also rather impressive to me. I knew that it was a massive structure just looking at it from the outside, but there are so many things held within its walls. I wouldn’t even call it a library honestly. It’s more of a one stop shop for anything you could ever need ever with many of its greatest aspects being free for students. The aforementioned Maker Space will be a very useful tool in the future, the Creamery and coffee shop within are great places to go when in need of a quick pick me up, the Ask Us desk is incredibly convenient and all those who work there in my experience are incredibly competent and are always able to help me. The library itself though is a great place for me to study. For example, I was in D.H. Hill from 4:30 pm to 4:00 am yesterday just studying. I haven’t gotten that much work done in one sitting in my entire life, so I think they library will be a very beneficial place for me to be spending my time.

Being a student researcher in the digital age means something completely different from being a student researcher previously. Information is much easier for us to obtain, but we are presented with other challenges as well. For example, instead of having one solely trusted source such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, we have to cypher through many online articles or websites to gain the same knowledge that could be obtained from a printed encyclopedia. As mentioned in the Scientific American article given to us “Students must now discern if the source they found contains accurate, factual, and documented information”. Furthermore, while the internet is easily accessible, the content may or may not be accurate. Most things written on the internet are not peer reviewed like academic journals, so the job of evaluating the article is put upon ourselves. The article posted by The Atlantic also brings up a similar argument that Google is making the population more stupid. We are constantly presented with information and it is so easily accessible that we don’t have to thoroughly read upon a subject. Our attention spans are decreasing and the internet is causing our mental habits to change. I agree that the advent of the internet is likely changing our mental habits, but whether or not we are becoming a more stupid society as a whole is yet to be determined.