Now who do I believe? For years now we have heard much about the oncoming demise of the library and its services due to the increasing use of general search engines like Google to find academically acceptable sources for student assignments. Somehow this article from First Monday: A Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet entitled, “Beyond Google: How Do Students Conduct Academic Research?,” slipped my notice. Alison Head argues that students use library services more than we realize. I hope this is true. Among the more interesting results of her study:

1. A majority of students began their research by consulting course readings or the library’s Web site for online access to scholarly journals. To a lesser extent, students used Yahoo!, Google, and Wikipedia as first steps.
2. Most students consulted aggregated research resources — many of which had been identified for their scholarly quality by professors, librarians, or library databases.
3. Many students were challenged by research tasks, especially selecting and evaluating information and figuring out professors’ expectations for quality research.

Notice also that three times as many students begin their research with the library’s website rather than visiting the library or asking a librarian:

Recent research has made claims about students’ reliance on the Internet for academic research over their use of campus libraries.

Research from the “Pew Internet & American Life Project” reported that nearly three–quarters (73 percent) of college students reported using the Internet for research more than the campus library (Jones, 2002). Other findings suggest a vast majority of students turn to the Internet first for academic research (Griffiths and Brophy, 2005; Van Scoyoc, 2006). Further, some authors have claimed students use commercial search engines, such as Google, and bypass the library’s many complexities all together (Thompson, 2003).

1. Yet, our study did not substantiate earlier claims about the Internet cannibalizing academic library use. Instead, we found:
   Students used the library and considered library resources helpful — both the reference librarians and databases from the library Web site.
2. A majority of students were not as reliant on search engines, as prior research studies have suggested. Only about one in 10 students in our survey reported using to Yahoo! or Google first when conducting research. Only two in 10 students in our survey used search engines as a second step.

I suppose it’s time to add a few more services to the library’s website. We already offer reference and research help through instant messaging and I am currently working on adding screencast tutorials on accomplishing certain tasks, podcast interviews on researching certain fields, and an online research guide. Anything else I should add?

Popularity: 7% [?]

We’re hurled at rocket speed down a rabbit hole of action and suspense. Run, Dick, Run! See Spot Run! Run and Jump! Run, Run, Run! Run, Jump, Run! Even the most agile adrenaline jockeys will find it hard to maintain the pace. The authors ask us to confront the terrifying question: Who Is It? Just when one can bear no more, they wisely divert with the chick lit hijinks of “Something Pretty,” but any returned sense of safety is just a will-of-the-wisp as one is again forced to ask the horrible: ”Where Is Sally?” Do you really want to know?

From Blogging For A Good Book, a blog of the Williamsburg Regional Library in Virginia, in a gelastically funny review of this classic of children’s books that everyone my age remembers reading.

Popularity: 13% [?]

The interplay of these four doctrines–sola scriptura, the priesthood of believers, preparation for grace, and sanctification–inspired a passion for preaching, writing, and reading in colonial New England. But though these doctrines involved the individual soul, the culture of evangelical literacy was nurtured in corporate institutions, including the family, the church, the town, and the colony, all of which blended public and private in a special New England way. New Englanders understood social life through the concept of covenant, a contract of mutuality and reciprocity. … The way New Englanders organized their families, communities, and institutional lives would have a profound impact on the growth of the culture of evangelical literacy.

From David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 17-18. Read the abstract in the Commonplaces Library.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Writing to “average people” about Christianity, Dorothy Sayers wrote:

The only letter I ever want to address to average people is one that says: Why don’t you take the trouble to find out what is Christianity and what isn’t? Why, when you can better yourself to learn technical terms about electricity, won’t you do as much for theology before you begin to argue?

Why do you never read either the ancient or the modern authorities in the subject, but take your information for the most part from biologists and physicists who have picked it up as inaccurately as yourselves? Why do you accept mildewed old heresies as bold and constructive contributions to modern thought when any handbook on Church History would tell you where they came from?

Why do you complain that the proposition that God is three-in-one is obscure and mystical and yet acquiesce meekly in the physicist’s fundamental formula, “2P-PQ equals IH over 2 Pi where I equals the square root of minus 1,” when you know quite well that the square root of minus 1 is paradoxical and Pi is incalculable?

What makes you suppose that the expression “God ordains” is narrow and bigoted whereas the expressions “nature provides” or “science demands” are objective statements of fact?

You would be ashamed to know as little about internal combustion as you do about beliefs. I admit that you can practice Christianity without knowing much about theology, just as you can drive a car without understanding internal combustion. But if something breaks down in the car, you humbly go to the man who understands the works, whereas if something goes wrong with religion you merely throw the creed away and tell the theologian he is a liar.

Why do you want a letter from me telling you about God? You will never bother to check up on it and find out whether I am giving you a personal opinion or the Church’s doctrine. Go away and do some work.

Yours very sincerely,

Dorothy L. Sayers

I found this letter attributed to Dorothy Sayers in a 1964 paper by William Greenlee on “Reference and Research in a Theological Library” (American Theological Library Association Summary of Proceedings. 18: 70-79). I may post some observations in the coming days about how research in a theological library has changed in the last forty years, but today I thought I would reproduce this letter to “average people.” Greenlee attributes Geddes MacGregor, Introduction to Religious Philosophy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), pp. 11-12, which I have verified, but MacGregor in turn gives no citation of his source.

Popularity: 13% [?]

LibriVox is an attempt to make all public domain books freely available online as audiobooks read by volunteers. The project is ongoing, but Joy Chan has already recorded and made available Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. She reads it well, and her accent makes listening to the 12 hours and 28 minutes a joy — at least I hope so. I have not yet made it all the way through her readings.

The readings are available in either 64 or 128 kbps. Each is included for your streaming pleasure. Please notice that each track is therefore listed twice.

Or listen to individual parts:

Part I

1. Author’s Apology for his Book – 00:11:27 (11MB)
2. The First Stage – 00:34:09 (32.8MB)
3. The Second Stage – 00:29:19 (28.2MB)
4. The Third Stage – 00:45:50 (44MB)
5. The Fourth Stage – 00:24:17 (23.3MB)
6. The Fifth Stage – 00:45:25 (44.5MB)
7. The Sixth Stage – 00:27:53 (26.8MB)
8. The Seventh Stage – 00:46:31 (44.7MB)
9. The Eighth Stage – 00:09:53 (9.5MB)
10. The Ninth Stage – 00:63:50 (61.3MB)
11. The Tenth Stage – 00:33:13 (31.9MB)
12. Conclusion of Part First – 00:01:52 (1.8MB)

Part II

1. The Author’s Way – 00:14:38 (14.1MB)
2. Pilgrimage of Christiana and Her Children – 00:28:57 (27.8MB)
3. The First Stage – 00:19:30 (18.7MB)
4. The Second Stage – 00:36:36 (35.2MB)
5. The Third Stage – 00:22:40 (21.8MB)
6. The Fourth Stage – 00:43:14 (41.5MB)
7. The Fifth Stage – 00:25:40 (24.7MB)
8. The Sixth Stage (part 1) – 00:40:20 (38.7MB)
9. The Sixth Stage (part 2) – 00:43:37 (41.9MB)
10. The Seventh Stage – 00:25:09 (24.2MB)
11. The Eighth Stage – 00:56:56 (54.7MB)
12. Author’s Farewell – 00:00:57 (919.8KB)

Read along via Google Books.

Popularity: 9% [?]

I have recently been asked to review two books for the Association of Christian Librarians. Now I’m concerned. According to Bob Harris, a contributor to Paper Cuts: A Blog About Books by the editors of the New York Times Book Review, I should not use any of the following words:

poignant: Something you read may affect you, or move you. That doesn’t mean it’s poignant. Something is poignant when it’s keenly, even painfully, affecting. When Bambi’s mom dies an adult may think it poignant. A child probably finds it terrifying.

compelling: Many things in life, and in books, are compelling. The problem is that too often in book reviews far too many things are found to be such. A book may be a page turner, but that doesn’t necessarily make it compelling. Overuse has weakened a word that implies an overwhelming force.

Reviewers often combine these first two words. Like Chekhov’s gun. If there is a poignant in a review’s third paragraph, a compelling will most likely follow. Frequently reviewers forestall the suspense and link the words right away, as in “this poignant and compelling novel…”

intriguing: It doesn’t mean merely interesting or fascinating although it’s almost always used in place of one of those words. When it is, the sense of something illicit and mysterious is lost.

eschew: No one actually says this word in real life. It appears almost exclusively in writing when the perp is stretching for a flashy synonym for avoid or reject or shun.

craft (used as a verb): In “The Careful Writer,” Theodore M. Bernstein reminds us that “the advertising fraternity has decided craft is a verb.” Undeterred, reviewers use it when they are needlessly afraid of using plain old write. They also try to make pen a verb, as in “he penned a tome.”

muse (used as a verb): Few things in this world are mused. They are much more often simply written, thought or said. “War is hell,” he mused. Not much dreamy rumination there.

Stretching for the fanciful — writing “he crafts or pens” instead of “he writes”; writing “he muses” instead of “he says or thinks” — is a sure tip-off of weak writing.

lyrical: Reviewers use this adjective when they want to say something is well written. But using the word loosely misses the sense of expressing emotion in an imaginative and beautiful way. Save lyrical for your next review of Wordsworth.

I think we should probably add a few more to the list — especially when reviewing works of theology. My list of words and phrases to avoid when reviewing a book:

1. Timely. Timeliness is good. But it does not automatically render the work a good treatment of the issue. A cheeseburger can be timely, though I would rather have a timely cheeseburger made from quality beef on a sourdough bun than a happy meal from McDonalds. Currency is not enough.
2. A valuable contribution. But so is my employer’s valuable yearly contribution to my retirement annuity. Please tell me what this author has to say to bring clarity to the issue or which moves the discussion forward.
3. Accessible. You mean cheap? The library has many copies? What?
4. Rivettingly interesting. I actually saw this on a back-cover blurb recently. The book was on Baptist Ecclesiology. Riveting? I think not. The real question is, “But is it Accessible?”
5. A uniquely helpful resource. Like Liquid Nails – it does the job but without all that old-fashioned hammering.
6. Brilliantly conceived. I.e., “I wish I had thought of this instead.”
7. A welcomed contribution to the field. Welcome to the club, Mr. Author. You have passed the test and we can now teach you the secret hand shake.

Please leave your additions to this list in the comments.

Popularity: 5% [?]