Librarians: Get Smart

I’m sure many of you read the Atlantic article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” (July/August 2008), where Nicholas Carr argues that the internet is altering  our reading and thinking abilities.   As a follow up to this piece, the Atlantic recently published “Get Smart” (July/August 2009) in which Jamais Cascio argues that Google induced ADD is actually not as bad as we think.  In regards to the massive amounts of information available to us, he writes “…with the Internet, creating material is nearly as easy as consuming it…the proliferation of diverse voices may actually improve your overall ability to think.”   Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You, believes that the complexity of interactive media offered to us  is actually a form of “cognitive calisthenics”– something scientists refer to as fluid intelligence.  Cascio’s article explains fluid intelligence as “the ability to find meaning in confusion and to solve new problems, independent of required knowledge.”  He argues that we shouldn’t let fear blind us to the potential of the “knowledge-at-a-touch” era.  As a librarian, I agree with Cascio in that “the trouble isn’t that we have too much information at our fingertips, but that our tools for managing it are still in their infancy.”  Web 2.0 technologies and tools are just the beginning of the solution to information overload– and also offer new roles to librarians willing to think “outside of the book.”  What innovative workshops could your library offer to assist patrons in managing information?  At this year’s SUNY Librarian’s Association conference,  I attended a session entitled “Teaching Faculty and Staff How to be “Social” –Reinventing the Drop-In Workshop” presented by Carrie Eastman, Susanne Markgren, and Leah Massar Bloom  of Purchase College.  Check out the list of workshop ideas generated by participants, which includes a variety of workshops which follow the theme of information management.