In this age of the internet, anything (literally) is almost a Google away. I always had the impression that you can always find anything you want on the net, let be research stuffs, etc, then come the ugly part of the internet- you will never find valuable or information useful too you. The ability to determine information and knowledge from raw data (i.e your searches) is also a part of the the work and skills needed to get stuff for decision making. Then there is also the commercial part aspect as well, having to pay for any additional research information which don’t always turn out to be what you want.
So there must be a catch to relooking back to print media in this technological age. Something writers having spend countless hours writing and going through the hassles of publishing will definitely spot something more critical than what any broke can post or publish on the net at an instant (which also comes the questionability of creditability and factuality). So those stuff called books are worthy to check out right?
Armed with shovels and my archaeological hat this morning, I raided my area’s Bukit Merah community library since I last stepped foot about 5 years ago. Mainly for information to prepare myself for my SAT and college entrance essays and any possible anvils of death the college boards can throw at me.
Searching for books there was quite a pain though- it’s not like click-to-a-shelf, their PC search there directed me to other libraries like Bukit Panjang by default unless I specified a local search. It’s like “what the?” Can’t the computer acknowledge the essence of me and IT being right here in Bukit Merah? They should implement a local search for the books right here and not simply uplink to default NBL’s website. To make matters worst, they do not have a call number/ISBN number floorplan layout, so you have to raid almost every shelf to check the numbers… Grrrrr. I remembered searching for books in SP library was less of a tedious feat, and that library is almost 3 times bigger!
Nevertheless, simply homed onto “the educational” shelves and found an SAT book in no time, together with few other US college prep books like “Getting into the elite college of your choice” (yea!) I will be sinking myself into, don’t think I can find all these stuff from collegeboard on the net as readily and royalty-free. On a sidenote, I never saw myself revisiting the SAT since my JC days, man I hope I do score much better this time.
The library on the contrary was a rather nice place to chill out for the afternoon as well, caught up in the computer section to learn a few new skills or two in Photoshop CS2 and optimizing Windows XP, and literally borrowed the whole PHP5 codebase with me as well!
Whoa me reading!
