The new breed of digital illiterati exhibit a complete misunderstanding or indifference to the distinction between subscription and free online information as well as a chilling aversion to reading books. These "scholars" waste untold hours fruitlessly but insistently looking through thousands of Alta Vista search results, vainly hoping against hope that somehow all the right answers will tumble forth.
The research for a typical undergrad paper nowadays seems to consist of two hours of fruitless WWW browsing followed by a reluctant visit to the library. During this visit, one poorly formatted query is submitted to a full-text periodical database, the first five full-text articles on the results list of 800 hits are downloaded, and then it's Miller time.
While we may deplore such practices, or smirk at them, the dangerous reality is that a new class of information consumer has arisen ... The inforamus is someone doing bad searches with an inadequate search engine in a morass of disorganized, incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate information, and who is perfectly happy with the results. If, as the library literature suggests, trained reference librarians answer questions correctly only half the time, how do you think the inforamus is doing?
David Majka, American Libraries, June/July 2001
 4:36:33 PM Google It! comment
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