Information Access

Jorge Luis Borges’s story about a library with endless amounts of books that seem to mean nothing or have no apparent usefulness is how I feel a lot of the time if I am trying to find information about a topic online. However, compared to when finding information through books that may or may not even be about your topic seems to take the cake. Borges’s story tells of this massive library where researchers spend their entire lives searching for information to their questions in order to attain knowledge. Eventually the researcher realizes that they will never find all the information needed and they eventually accept death. Although this story may sound like the life of a sad and useless researcher it led way for a development of research methods that changed how information is chronicled and found. Methods of configuring search engines to include specific search results only to the topic intended to be researched. This is one of the most useful yet overlooked innovation in my opinion, because a research paper that would have taken months to write about is now able to get done by a procrastinating college student in under a week. Not only does it help on a scholarly level, but also a practical level. For instance, if you need to fix anything on your car and you do not have the help you need, lets say you have a flat on the side of the road, you are able to look up on your phone not only how to change a tire, but possibly even how to change a tire on the exact make and model of your car. Access to information is one of the most crucial aspects of educational development in my opinion.

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