Today's library, tomorrow's 'googlary'?

Yes, there is clearly no doubt that the world has made a gigantic leap forward after the great invention of the computer, internet and most importantly, a globalised, easily accessible search engine with almost infinite archives in it called Google. Due to the change brought to the world, students would of course need to advance along with it to maintain updated and informed. However, having a facility which eases us in sourcing for information compared to libraries might not be all advantageous. Especially regarding the source and integrity research papers from students have been quite an issue once Google was internationalised.

Firstly due to easy access to the impossibly large archive of information supplied by the world, students can easily make use of information discovered by others, put it into their own research and take the credit as their own. Unless the authorities have specialised programmes or systems in solving this particular problem, trying to recreate the method these students source out the information and trying to catch them would be like trying to find a needle in a sea of haystack. The worst thing is, information on the net can be instantly added or removed, hence, even if we had the ability to find a needle in a sea of haystack, it might not even be there in the first place. On the other hand, if only hard-printed books in particular libraries were to be allowed to used for research, it would be a lot easier to check whether the students have been cheating as every book which enters the library would have already been clearly categorised into the nature of its information and also the book would not just disappear without knowing.

Also, due to the easy access to write onto and edit information on the internet without being required to reveal your own identity, the internet is greatly infested with unreliable facts provided by unknown people around the world who do not verify their statements with proper evidence. Hence, this makes our findings from the internet used to assist the research of students or even professional researchers faulty, which would be a great flaw as it might be the main factor which leads to incorrect information spread to the world if the internet were to be depended on too much. Hence, printed books would of course be more reliable as it has already been processed by people and the writer would definitely be identified, hence preventing anyone from stating unsubstantiated facts.

However, the good thing about Google compared to the library is that we are able to source out relevent information we require very quickly and effectively. Imagine you were to find the size of the liver of an average Japanese snow monkey in a library, finding the the part of snow monkeys is already a great challenge, not to mention their liver's size. However, with Google, just a few seconds of typing and processing, and the information appears instantaneously in front of you.

Hence, I think that Googling is very effective in sourcing information but we must be cautious in selecting reliable and useful ones and not inflict copyright issues.