Research Journal Entry #11

I got so much work done on both my papers this past week! My research proposal is about 98% finished at this point, thank goodness. I just need to proof-read it once or twice for errors and awkwardness, and I will be totally set with it. The literature review for 2.0 is about 90% done – the concluding paragraph is still unfinished, and I need to proof read it all to make sure the topic sentences go with the thesis and all, but otherwise I am happy with it. I’ve also made a lot of progress on my 2.0 final project – the blog is up and running, though a little lacking in updates because Ashaway is a sleepy little town and summer reading is only just kicking off. I wrote the majority of the implementation plan for it yesterday on my lunch break, and it’s going pretty smoothly. Oh, and I also aced my last Cataloging quiz, which is a small miracle because I had to guess at a lot of it. I am beyond thrilled that everything is running so on schedule and I was able to stick to my own deadlines – I’m a little proud of myself, too, I have to say.

I’m not out of the woods, yet, though. I still have to get through the rest of Cataloging, and while I have managed to build a decent margin of error from doing so well on the quizzes, that can easily be shattered by the fact that I do not understand MARC whatsoever, or almost anything else for that matter.

Anyway, I’m giving myself the weekend off cause it’s the holiday and I deserve it. I’ll still have to check in at some point to copy/paste or upload my annotations and these journal entries onto Sakai, but since they’re basically done, I’m not counting it. Otherwise, I plan to be at the beach for as much time as possible – basking in the gorgeous weather that the meteorologists have promised, dancing at one of the two foam parties going on at Paddy’s, and/or attending the Pimps & Hoes Ball…also at Paddy’s. I might finally get around to making that berry pie I’ve been dreaming about for a month, too.

Research Journal Entry #7

I finished my bibliographic annotations over the weekend, thankfully, and submitted them along with my research proposal. So, hopefully that will go over well. Until I get them back, I’m disinclined to start doing anything major towards the final project…that, and I’m just out straight anyway and if I look at any more text on Information Overload, my brain will overload and spontaneously combust. So, I guess that’s all for now. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll start on taking the annotations and turning them into what they actually need to be – it doesn’t even sound that horribly difficult, just a bit time-consuming and maybe a little mind-numbing, especially when it’s so gorgeous out. It was definitely a mistake to sign up for summer classes. It’s torturous to be stuck inside with homework on the days we’ve been having. Oh well. Live and learn. Crash and burn.

Research Journal Entry #6

Well, I’ve hit another road block regarding my research. Basically, I’ve read approximately a dozen articles, but only four of them are direct reports of research done by the authors themselves, and I need at least five. Sugar fudge.

Besides that, my annotations are going pretty well. It’s difficult for me to gauge what the strengths and weaknesses of each study are, but I’m managing. Figuring out the intentions of the researchers, the methods, and the results is pretty easy.

My goal is to finish the annotations by tomorrow afternoon on my lunch break, and then finish my readings for the Library 2.0 Literature review by Friday so I can start putting both of these projects together by the start of next week, and hopefully finish both of them by the end of June, so then I’ll really only have to worry about Cataloging for the first two weeks of July and then I’ll be g-o-n-e.

But in order to finish the annotations, I will probably need to figure out a fifth article…and there just isn’t that much research out there already on my topic specifically. Lots of information on how it relates to marketing, lots of information on how to manage it, but not a lot of information on information overload itself, which is weird.

And in order to finish my readings for 2.0, I will need to be able to stay awake while reading for more than half an hour at a time. Ugh. Easier said than done. The topic (how Facebook/social networking has affected interpersonal relationships) is actually really interesting to me, but I am not a natural reader. I am a natural sleeper.

Anyway, time to make dinner (mixed veggies sauteed in garlic and olive oil with whatever spices I can find in the cabinet…I wish I had some kind of sauce to go with it, but alas, I am a poor girl and a poor meal planner sometimes) and start on all that homework.

Big Data, Big Brother

The first blog entry I read was called Big Data and the Benefits from the Bubble, from Andrew McAfee’s blog. He argues that Web 2.0 has led to Bubble 2.0, a technology and information bubble that has produced “big data” (which Dan Kusnetzky explains as “the tools, processes and procedures allowing an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets and storage facilities”). Big Data is currently being used in a variety of ways, such as tracking and storing weather patterns from the Nation Weather Service and personal information on Facebook, but Andrew McAfee focuses his argument primarily upon its use to track and determine trends for the sake of marketing and advertising. The problem, as many people see it, is that all bubbles burst eventually and leave investors and employees scrambling to salvage their money and careers – in this case, investors in large marketing and advertising companies and those experts who are currently making a great living off of using data to get the right advertisement to the right person’s online experience. Andrew McAfee, however, believes that when Bubble 2.0 does burst, the technology will still be very useful in its own right and also be highly applicable to analyzing even more significant issues and making greater advances, in the fields of science, medicine, politics, language, etc.

My only concern with his article is that I don’t believe that Big Data is only being used first and foremost for marketing. Marketing and advertising is inarguably of enormous importance to the world and in the U.S. especially, but but I can’t imagine that all the other extremely well-known (and even more lesser-known) social, moral, and health issues are being overlooked and underanalyzed by all of the technological advances made in recent years.

I also read a blog entry called How Social Media and Big Data Will Unleash What We Know Dion Hinchcliffe. In it, the author discusses the invaluable resources that savvy businessmen and marketers can tap into through the private information that individuals now so freely offer up to the public through social media, and the methods through which nearly innumerable amounts of fast-paced and ever-changing data is gathered and analyzed as Big Data. Hinchcliffe also acknowledges the difficulty in “separating the wheat from the chaff,” which is a common phrase now used in relation to information overload and is here applied to the fact that although all of the information shared through social media networks is legitimate, not all of it is especially useful for the purposes of determining trends (think of the innocuous “yeah lol me 2” comments that may stem from a more significant statement of loving a new recording artist or brand of clothes), and this is where Big Data tools and processes are arguably most helpful. Finally, Hinchcliffe delves into the most pressing issue facing marketers and social media data analysists today, which is the speed with which they can process the information to determine trends, and the goal of being able to then predict those other trends to follow before they even happen. By beating time, they can (at least in theory) harness the power of suggestion to the fullest and then (as Andrew McAfee has also opined) be most able to get the right information/advertisement to the right person, even before they necessarily know it’s right themselves.

We are actively participating in our own objectification and commodification.

And so my readings come full circle.

Research Journal Entry #3

I am at a temporary standstill with my research progress – I’ve read through all the articles I printed out last week, and only half of them were relevant or useful, and virtually none of them contained actual statistics. I’m at a loss. I’ve spoken with the reference librarians at URI, I’ve gone through all the databases I can access. Currently waiting for Dr. Adams to get back to my email(s). I guess I’ll just take the most relevant articles and look through their bibliographies…but there’s no guarantee I can find the full-text of them. Ugh. I’ll tackle that later tonight, after I go for a run and then try to figure out what on earth all the ugly little abbreviations are supposed to mean in my cataloging class with Dr. Ma.

I should maybe (probably) just choose a different topic, but I hate to throw away any of the little progress I’ve already made, and given the results my searches are generating and the issues I’m having with sifting through all the articles, I am even more adament about investigating and exposing the crippling effects of information overload. There is genuine fatigue, anxiety, frustration, a feeling of hopelessness – at least, for me.

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.