infolit land

摘要

It's fairly easy to teach someone how to use a database. It's no challenge to provide an information evaluation checklist. Sometimes information literacy instruction seems like repeatedly teaching basic skill sets, which is predictable and boring. I'm not sure this is doing our students a favor, because those skill sets, without deeper insight, create the impression that the ability to do good research develops easily, even when students have little fundamental understanding of how information works. This column considers several deeper insights that could help us teach a more intelligent form of information literacy. TOPICS ARE NOT FLAT One of the biggest downsides of a search engine like Google is that it presents the world of information as flat, without context. The world of information is not flat, it's hierarchical. An example: You want to study Napoleon. Easy, right? French emperor, defeated at the battle of Waterloo, exiled to Elba. But that's not the only Napoleon. There are also Napoleon II and III. Napoleon is a type of brandy, a type of pastry, a brand of grills and fireplaces, even a movie (Napoleon Dynamite). A Google search lays out all these options in a single result set (with grills and fireplaces having more prominence than the French emperor). Words don't mean much unless they are in context. You, the user, have to figure out which Napoleon you want.