Research Journal Entry #2

I don’t have anything too crazy to report yet, besides the fact that I am experiencing information overload and subequent anxiety by researching the topic of information overload and information anxiety, which is a little like ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife.

The stack of papers I’ve already printed out is about an inch thick, and made up of about 15 articles, varying in length and helpfulness and relevance and readability greatly. I’ve gotten through the first 4 easily, the next 2 somewhat less easily, and the rest remain to be seen.

In all seriousness, it is extremely difficult to find information on information overload without becoming overloaded and straying from what I actually want to learn about it – so far, I have a lot of articles on ways to resolve overload through new technology, because those are the ones that made themselves most readily available, and as a product of the 21st Century Google Universe, those are the ones I printed. I’m totally guilty of or victim to almost everything I’ve read about so far. It’s frightening and frustrating.

Once I’ve gone through all of the articles, I’ll probably do what I usually do – extract the quotes and statistics I’ve highlighted and put them in a Word document, then rearrange them into categories. I also plan on creating a list of synonyms, because everyone has some new way of saying “I’m overwhelmed by technology!” Technophobia, information fatigue, yada yada yada. But that’s next week’s challenge, so I’ll just think about that tomorrow (meaning Tuesday).

I’m going to be that girl who brings research articles to the beach tomorrow morning (8:30am, what what – gotta beat the crowds and get a good spot, duh) during Memorial Day Weekend. Also, my companion for tomorrow is none other than my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. So that should be interesting. I’m packing mini bottles of wine.

Research Journal Entry #1

I’ve decided I’m also going to use this blog as a way to write and keep track of my Research Journals for my Research and Evaluation class, also taught by Professor Adams. So, nobody freak out if you stumble upon this and suddenly think you’ve missed something on the syllabus. I’m just mixing it up a little. So, with no further adieu, Journal Entry #1:

Our first class for Research and Evaluation was two days ago, and I left in a conflicted state of sheer panic, preemptive exhaustion, and numbing acceptance of my fate. A 20 page paper isn’t wholly unexpected or particularly unreasonable, but I had somehow managed to hold “a perfect carefree summer” and “a productive academic summer” in my head as two separate entities leading up to this week, and now I realize that these two are mutually exclusive. It also doesn’t help that I will be in Greece for the last week and a half of the summer semester, so the 10 weeks that I am granted to complete the assignments for this class (and my two others) is suddenly condensed to 8. But at least I’ll be in Greece, right? Gotta take the good with the bad and look on the bright side.

During class, I decided to focus my paper on the effect of information overload on individuals, and I spent almost this entire morning sifting through title after title and abstract after abstract, looking for relevant articles to print out. I suppose I would mostly like to gain some statistical insight on whether access to a surplus of information aids in processing and analysis and the subsequent formation of one’s own opinions based on a variety of others, or whether it increases the likelihood of becoming overwhelmed and either shutting down entirely or after only accessing one or two forms of information and then forming an incomplete (and possible unofficial, unfounded) opinion.

A personal example of how a surplus of information can be beneficial to the information seeker is when I am looking for a recipe online. Obviously, if I’m looking for a specific recipe that someone suggested, I have to find that particular one, but if I am just hoping to make some meatballs for dinner, then I can easily access a variety of recipes through Google, and after doing a brief, informal comparision and analysis of the varied ingredients and measurements, I can make my own version, and I think that this makes me a better cook in a lot of ways. However, if I am looking for an accurate account of a recent newstory, such as the assasination of Osama bin Laden, I can go to the typical news circuits like CNN or the BBC or the New York Times or check out the White House PR and try to figure things out from there, but what if their account varies slightly? What if I’m the type of person who believes that what the government says is true and what is actually true vary greatly? I do actually feel that this is (at least to some degree) an inconvenient truth in politics, and I frequently feel the need to investigate for myself. Unfortunately, however, there are just so many conspiracy theorists out there now that it’s almost impossible to access them all and take them all into consideration, and I usually just give up before I even get started.

Oh hey.

So here’s my first entry for the Library 2.0 Social Networking class. It’s really pointless (the entry, not the class!) – I just wanted to have something on the main part of the site to prove that I know how to operate these things.

More to come later.

Curb your enthusiasm.