Summary: Interview With A Digital Immigrant

Words: 814
Pages: 4

Interview With a Digital Immigrant
This assignment was interesting for me to pursue since I had the perfect subject for the interview, my dad. My father just retired as Superintendent of Schools in a school district in Schuylkill County. In 1992, he finished his doctoral dissertation, which was prior to the onset of the Internet and its numerous search engines and database sites. It was also interesting for me to see how resourceful he was in gathering the information necessary for such a large endeavor of writing a dissertation in a time when there was little instant gratification of typing in a few words and receiving hundreds of Google responses. The Internet has changed the way we do research, particularly – more information is available,
…show more content…
Since my father doesn’t have much patience, I was curious to see how he handled the not so instantaneous results provided by searching Google.
When I asked what books, databases, and reference guides were acceptable sources, his response to this started with a laugh. “In the olden days, we had to use the Library for just about everything. We knew the Dewey Decimal System and what 000-099 stood for.” After the lecture, he came back to earth and stated that, “text books, journals and periodicals were the major sources of research information.” With the Internet available, he stated that he would have been able to finish his research in about a quarter of the time.
According to my father, the major part of his research came from a database called the Education Research Information Center, better known as ERIC. Topics were submitted to a central database that created the search. Articles, abstracts, or films called “microfiche” were generated with the topic that was presented. My father said that normally the topic had to be narrowed in order to get to the “meat” of the research area you were pursuing. Along with the information initially received you also had to have access to a microfiche reader in order to read what was on the film. I immediately thought that this process sounded extremely
…show more content…
It was spent in the library’s card catalogue to locate the main referenced texts, journals or periodicals that were found in the ERIC search. He said the main reason for this was to verify the sources to make sure the information was presented correctly. He said he remembered looking up a source from the ERIC search only to find that the subject (a doctoral dissertation) was completely plagiarized. Therefore, it only made sense in his mind to verify everything before he committed to his research. This is somewhat consistent with today, having to verify sources on the Internet to look for bias and similar plagiarism; however, this process is much easier than the processes of the