RESEARCH IN THE AGE OF GOOGLE

 

Yesterday I wanted to know something about one of the characters in War and Peace. Knowing that my 1946 Encyclopaedia Britannica had excellent articles written by literary experts, I went to the closet in the office, pulled out the boxes containing the encyclopedias I had never unpacked since moving to my current home, and found the “W” volume. My, it was heavy! After flipping through many pages, I discovered that there is no War and Peace entry. No doubt I could have found the index volume and found what I was searching—under Tolstoy, perhaps—but this was starting to become work. Why go through all this when I could simply Google for it?

 

It wasn’t quite that easy, of course. Googling first brought up ads for movies and books with similar titles. However, I found the information quite soon, and with less physical work than needed with the Britannica.

 

Research has changed greatly in the 60 years since I began looking up information for anything more than a quick class project. Back in the late fifties I began assembling a stack of index cards for each topic I needed to write about.  I remember spending days or weeks reading the literature, deciding which materials to save, and organizing my cards by authors’ names. This was very time-consuming, but because I had learned which journals were trustworthy, I ended up with a good collection of references.

 

Today I can Google for information and immediately download hundreds of articles. Oh, and much advertising that Google deems to be relevant. If I want to search for Neanderthals, for instance, Googling brings up millions of links. There are not only the obvious Wikipedia article, but also links to the Dead Neanderthals (a rock group?), to various movies and books with Neanderthals in the titles, and to miscellaneous ads whose connection to the Neanderthals I fail to understand. I find all this irritating enough, but far worse is the misinformation provided. One link even leads to a creationist site. Also, some research results shown on Google are from non-peer-reviewed articles.

 

I do Google, of course. Having instant access to information is very helpful, and I have learned how to separate the wheat from at least some of the chaff. For young learners who do not yet know what sources to trust, the task is much harder.

 

I also find it rather boring just to Google. Push a few buttons, download some promising articles, and the job is nearly done. Real research should have some element of exploration. During many years as a grad student, I learned where to work in university libraries. There were always little study carrels tucked away among the stacks. I would find a carrel near a window in the biology or education library, put some notebooks on the desk to claim it, and explore the journals, armed with my index cards. Each card led me to an article; each article had footnotes showing other possibilities. Serendipity sometimes helped. Once at the University of Illinois I was searching for information about the mysterious fossils called conodonts, and suddenly came across a photo of what one author thought was the conodont animal. I felt like Lewis and Clark looking out at the Pacific for the first time.

 

Working in a real library has other advantages. Stanford and UC–Berkeley both have enormous education libraries, where I did research on textbooks for my PhD dissertation. While there, I took advantage of their collections of current magazines, such as the American Biology Teacher, The Science Teacher, and the American Educational Research Journal. As a grad student, I couldn’t afford to subscribe to them, but reading them every month was important.

 

Even libraries, to say nothing of Google, fall short when it comes to some research. There is nothing like primary sources! David Tyack, the noted historian of education, once literally stumbled over a box of old records kept by a school board, and was able to use the contents in his own research. My own collection of antique textbooks began with books inherited from my parents and uncles, teachers all. Most writers find themselves visiting places of interest, interviewing sources, and otherwise looking in the horse’s mouth.

 

So, I will use Google often. But I hope never to use it uncritically or as my sole source of information.