It actually makes me smile a little.  Because I feel for both sides.  The producers create this amazing product and they are showed up by people advancing it even more, and messing with it.  However, producers tend to be obsessed with holding everything over the public’s heads to intensify appeal (which means they may not be giving us products that are as good as they can be, because that way consumers have to constantly buy programs for updates).  Knowing that they are already rich and just want to be even more and more popular frustrates me, so I like knowing that everyday people can beat them at their game.  I’m proud of hackers for having such an amazing intelligence that can keep up with technology and then expand on it.  I mean, come on.  You have to admit that that is incredible.  However, I would be furious if I was able to come up with some incredible product or project and then someone went and took it and tweaked it for themselves.  The pride that comes with creating that product would be destroyed.  (However, as I implied before, some producers have so much pride that their heads are too big, so maybe it doesn’t hurt for them to have competition like this to keep them on their toes and hopefully more level-headed).

The best part of the article is the end, where I learned that many of the best hackers out there are now being given the coolest job.  I have to wonder if that’s the best idea.  Yes, it means that products will have more creativity going into them with the help of these creative geniuses, but then other creative geniuses without jobs are going to be working even harder to prove they can outsmart those producers as well.  The competition rages, and I have no clue what they’ll come up with next.

Back to the article… while google is stepping out of bounds reading emails, they are only doing it for the sake of pushing advertisements.  The e-mail snoops in the article can’t even pretend to claim that snooping around in the e-mail of another person is beneficial to them.  These snoops are more than likely mostly stalkers or government officials who, in my opinion, are stepping out of bounds by connecting to e-mails this way.  It’s creepy to know that someone could go into my account and follow my e-mails.  Our school is set up with a Microsoft Outlook account, which means people could get into the system and “snoop” in our email as well.  Knowing that Facebook and Myspace are out there expands the possibility that certain college students are being stalked, and if those stalkers are desperate enough, now they have ways of getting into our e-mail.  It’s a scary thing to know.

However, after all is said and done, what can we do?  We can take precautions, yes.  And I believe everyone should be cautious about what they have on the internet and what they’re sending into cyberspace.  But we can’t live in fear, either.  We have to just keep going, choose how much we’re going to trust the internet, and then when all is said and done, we have to hope for the best.  We don’t like this answer because we want to think we can control everything.  But we can’t.  There are going to be bad aspects to every good thing in this world, and we have to work with that.

I found an article called “Tote a Small Library to the Beach”.   It discusses a new device Sony has put out to allow readers to order books online and “carry” them on this device so that they can have lots of book options at the beach as opposed to toting 3 or 4 and sweating from the weight.  Obviously, this is a device meant to be handy at the beach but also for people who travel.  However, they aren’t seeing as much of a popularity hit from it as they expected.   Why is this?

I think it’s because book readers love the concept of having the physical book.  Yes, we’ve learned to tote numerous books, and we may suffer, but we learn to manage and there is a joy in having the book in hand as we read.  Book readers tend to be more old-fashioned, I think, and more traditional so they are more apt to stick to their old ways rather than give up the enjoyable experience for convenience.  Sometimes just because something is convenient doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable.  And the Sony device doesn’t offer more than 15,000 book options.  One of my favorite book series, Harry Potter, is one of the series not offered in the collection.  It is a device that is still quite limited and therefore probably not worth putting money into.  Maybe one day they will come up with an idea that sounds more appealing to the reading world. I believe it’s a possibility – after all, the internet has been a huge help to music.

This article discusses the problems with google, for those who have begun to consider google to be like a god.  It brings up issues such as all information being published as PDF rather than as books because nobody looks up books anymore.  It discusses the problems with searching google because most of the first links to come up are advertisements.  Another problem is that when you search, if you use words that are popular on the internet or in the blogging world, then those links come up first.

It’s interesting that we put so much reliance on google.  It is an amazing tool to use to search the internet.  But we have to stop using it as though it is the flawless.  We have to stop assuming it’s flawless.  We have to realize that we need to use it with discretion, and we also need to realize that these flaws can potentially hurt our personal lives, and so we need to have discretion when we put information on the internet.  We can’t get upset when google does something that messes us up.  We have to be careful and use what we’ve learned (for example in class) to be cautious on the internet.  Don’t put too much faith in something that is not worthy of that much trust.

I feel like all these databases are wonderful in providing sources for information.  I must say, it is very unfortunate that I am a senior, because I can’t fully appreciate the knowledge of this, seeing as how I’m 3 spanish papers away from graduating.  But I will say to all the younger students out there… get comfortable with these databases!  What an amazing thing to have full text articles or at least summaries of articles at your fingertips.  Even more amazing is the ability to get around the databases with ease so that you’re not frustrated trying to teach yourself HOW to research before you write a paper trying to explain something else.  I gave this advice in class, but I’ll say it again… go to the databases now, while you don’t have assignments overwhelming you!  Get comfortable with them!  One thing I researched was God and C.S. Lewis to see what I could find.  How amazing to see articles about subjects I ENJOY!  And the databases we covered were all helpful… Even though a few of them were more specific to certain majors, some were very general.  I love most that you can find full-text articles online.  I can’t believe that… advanced technology is amazing.  Please, take advantage of it, those of you who are here for awhile.

What is harder to take though, I think, is the fact that so much information that we’re told to trust is extraordinarily biased.  We are encouraged to go to articles and journals for our information, but we have to be careful because the wording can completely change the way we view the material.  Another thing that concerns me is the fact that our group looked up a guy in one of the databases who was an editor for a journal but then it turned out he made up a lot of his information.  Still, the library allows those journals to be a source because there are other articles in there that are accurate.  What blows my mind is, how many false stories are written each day that are never caught by editors?  These journalists have to come up with something every day, and it has to be something exciting.  No wonder we are fed such biased articles.  Has anyone ever read a research article?  Not that interesting, to be honest.  But then, how can we say those journal articles are any more reliable than wikipedia?  Yes, I agree, they are more reliable in the sense that not EVERYONE has a say in the subject of the article, but people are human and biased and sometimes, shockingly, they are fed wrong information therefore give wrong information.  I’m torn between throwing out the idea of trying to concern ourselves with getting accurate information, and trying to actually fight to make all information ACCURATE.

Another interesting article on the debate over Wikipedia.  I’m really not sure about this issue.  Both sides have good arguments. Personally, I think wikipedia is awesome.  It is a fascinating resource because we get opinions from all over the world.  I think it’s the fact that people freak out about that information being wrong that causes others to have fun with the pages and write ridiculous information.  A lot of it seems like the retaliation to everyone who panics about information being wrong.  We have to admit that we are not as stupid as we make ourselves out to be.  We know that if we read that Saddam Hussein had stinky feet, that it was probably not a valid bit of information.

However, there are arguments of bits of information that sound factual but are not. Can we trust others to put right the invalid information?  Who knows… I feel like we can trust people more than we think we can.  There will be a few idiots or kids who change things up, but the majority of people will catch on and take care of these issues and invalid statements.  What if we actually let wikipedia be the source that it is, and in the occasional case that a teacher stumbles across inaccurate information produced by this source, perhaps they could just bring it to the student’s attention rather than punish the student as if it were their fault.  I know that I have found a great deal of useful information on Wikipedia… but I have a feeling that everyone is going to prefer to be safe and simply stick to not allowing it as a source.  However, in all honesty, half the students are now being taught to be sneaky – go on Wikipedia, find the information, find a site that a teacher would accept that says the same thing as wikipedia, and site that source instead.

Our paranoia for things being “right” is turning students into a very sneaky generation that is really learning how to work the system that is a little overbearing.

I have to say, I sympathize for librarians or anyone working in a library trying to explain the set-up and the processes of the place.  The library is such a gold mine for information, but the way we view it is as… well… a bunch of dusty books that have been categorized in ways that seem to work for the people who chose to organize them to that effect.  Being an organizer myself, I actually can get quite frustrated just because the system is not the same way I would do it.  But I do also know that there is no “right” way to do it.  It’s all about learning the system and owning it yourself – if you can figure out how they set it up, you can get more out of the gold mine.

This video, as with many others, tries desperately to encourage viewers to get as much out of the resources the library has to offer as possible.  I have to say, though, that it is just HARD to make this seem interesting.  So people try desperately with goofy little tricks or flips over desks and silly songs to cheese the audience into the mindset of “Okay. Yes. We all get that the library seems stereotypically boring, but hey, we are silly just like you and maybe you can think we are goofy enough to be interesting.”  I feel like this is the wrong mindset.  What if people put passion behind the exploration of the library?  What if, instead of using examples like researching the evolution of fish, we showed how to look up books that people might enjoy?  What if we used intense songs that are popular?  I think people are afraid of that because it still doesn’t “fit” the library.  But the library could be an AWESOME place for students.  They could get stoked at the information.  I think it’s a mindset – we can either gear students to think “oh crap, more boring information that I don’t want to find”, or we can gear students to think “oh yes, this will make everything so much easier; I can actually OWN this!”

Oh, the idea of awesome music videos that could subliminally teach how to use the library to its fullest potential…

Today I had to start studying for my spanish test tomorrow… learning the definitions of 150 words and then being able to define them in spanish.  I own a spanish dictionary, but it doesn’t cover half of our vocab lists and the internet was driving me crazy… every single site costs money to use their thesaurus. 

Enter library class!  Because we had a test yesterday, I had been studying the worksheets from class.  One of them walked us through how to research in the library.  The worksheet had asked for us to pick a topic in the databases and then not only find articles on that topic, but also other guides for research sources.  I had chosen foreign languages on a whim, since that is my major.  Then I went through the information… I found useful spanish resources and listed them on the worksheet.

Wouldn’t you know it, one of the resources listed was a spanish synonym-antonym dictionary.  I realized that somewhere near that dictionary, in the same section of the library, there would probably be a regular spanish-english dictionary… preferable the Oxford addition one of my professors had pulled out one day.  That thing is enormous and would be perfect if I could find it.  So I followed the steps of the worksheet once again and looked up the call number for the dictionary I’d found.  Sure enough, in the resource section I found not only the synonym-antonym dictionary, but the Oxford dictionary as well.  Glorious!  Practical application of what we’ve been learning… I love it.

So now i can tell you… The resource section is the first section on the right when you enter the library.  And I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.  Those dictionaries are extraordinarily valuable in their use to me.  I’m very excited to have learned what I did to find them.

If students were able to stop focusing on the fear of plagiarizing, perhaps they would recognize the amazing potential they have to develop a theory or thesis through the enormous amount of information open to them.  As the beginning of the article discussed, there are many articles out there that are capable of supporting current research, which is really exciting if one doesn’t get caught up on the idea of plagiarism.  This article is definitely a good one though to put fear in people who are careless with their work or blatantly trying to cheat their way through their research.  Reading the stories such as the politician’s and the journalist’s made the repercussions of plagiarism much more serious.

It’s always nice to have labels to put with the “types” of citations and plagiarisms.  This article was nice enough to inform us of the types of citations so that we could be made aware of what exactly we were doing when we chose to use information.  The three ways to use information in a paper were through a summary, paraphrasing, or direct quotation.  The summary would involve taking information from, say, a paragraph of information from a source and breaking it down into two or three sentences of your own.  Paraphrasing, on the other hand, would involve saying the same thing as the source from which you took the information, but saying it in your own words.  Both of these methods are good in my opinion because they prove that you can interpret the information you are receiving from your sources.  Not only are you reading in the information, but you are owning that information and able to apply it to your own paper.  One thing you have to be careful of, though, is to make sure you don’t paraphrase or summarize in such a way that the information becomes twisted to prove the point you are trying to make.  The point isn’t to use information to prove yourself.  Research is intended for us to be curious, to ask questions, and to be able to find information to support our theories, like clues aiding in solving a mystery.  Distorting the “clues” would make your paper and your point completely ineffective, in my opinion.  Such distortion is sad, because it is such a cool feeling when you come up with an argument and are able to find genuine sources that can aid in strengthening your argument.

They also discussed the forms of plagiarism, so that we were made aware of how things could be done wrong.  There were three types of plagiarism: direct, indirect, and accidental plagiarism.  Direct plagiarism would be taking the source’s information and using it word-for-word without citing that source.  Basically, you would not give credit where it was due.  An even more blatant form of direct plagiarism would be simply buying a paper or article from someone.  Which is wrong and will end up hurting you in the long run, because any work that you might be credited for is not actually work that you are necessarily capable of doing, or knowledge that you have gained, for that matter.

Indirect plagiarism would be taking information from a source and, without quoting it word for word, using that information that had been unknown to you before and using it as part of your argument without, once again, giving credit where it was due.  That being to the person who provided you with the information to support your argument.

Accidental plagiarism is the most frustrating kind – when people inaccurately cite a source due to an inability to properly systemize their information as they research.  In an imperfect world, it seems reasonable to be a little more understanding of this type of plagiarism.  Everyone makes mistakes and some people are simply not gifted with the ability to organize, and that can get them into trouble.  It seems unfair to place them in the same category of theft as those who blatantly cheat their way through the system by way of plagiarism.

I did enjoy reading the suggestions on how to cite resources found on the internet, through methods such as changing the font of the citations and keeping up with the location of the sources as well as all their information.  My preference is to find the sources and bookmark them then put them in a folder on my computer so that I know that if I’m not completely sure which article I got a piece of information from, I can look back and find it.  I also prefer not to copy and paste because that allows me to do a lot more summarizing and paraphrasing rather than be tempted to use a bunch of direct quotations.  Then, even if I do have a direct quotation, I type it out so that as I type I can ensure that the quote makes sense in the paper.

All in all, this was a good article to read.  The information presented was mostly a review (as it probably is for most people) but it is always good to be reminded.  I like being able to recognize my use of information as either summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting.  However, I still believe that accidental plagiarism should not be punished so severely.  I agree, the person needs to be able to prove their plagiarism as a simple error, but they should not be labeled thieves.  Many of them could be presenting amazing arguments and information, and our strict rules could knock them out of the game and therefore hinder us from gaining beneficial insight from them.  I think back to great psychologists and philosophers such as (very obvious examples) Freud or Aristotle or Socrates.  They did not give strict citations and we cannot confirm that all their knowledge and wisdom is their own, and yet we continue to use them as valuable resources.  I could be mistaken… perhaps they thought ahead and made note of every person who sat and pondered with them in their age.  But I doubt it.  If we’re going to punish people for life for small mistakes in citations, it seems fitting to destroy any information given to us in all of history that does not provide citations with the resource.  After all, if it’s not giving credit where it’s due, it’s worthless, right?