D.H. Hill: Then vs. Now

On Thursday we spent our class time in English 101 in D.H. Hill Library on campus learning more about and exploring the resources available to us in the library. The experience was really eye opening to how many different types of resources are made available to NC State students from movies, 3D printing, journal articles, online databases, and traditional books as well. I learn that I can browse the shelves of D.H. Hill and look up books online in my dorm before I even step foot in the library and have a number to tell me exactly where to locate the book saving valuable time that would have been spent searching the shelves for the text. I have already begun to incorporate the library into my studies and research as a student through both the written material they have available for research purposes and their makerspace where I have been learning how to 3D print for my freshman engineering design day animatronics project.

Being a student researcher today in the digital age comes with a whole new set of rules and guidelines on how to find the best information available compared to how research was handled a decade or two ago. The positive side of this new era in research is the wide availability of information. Almost anything I wish to research can be found in just a few clicks saving a lot of time and money that was previously spent on printing out books and searching through shelves for the desired book. The downside however, is that with such a wide range of information we have to learn new techniques to sift through the data and find what is valuable to us as well as confirm that it is from a reputable source. In the past to be published in a book you had to go through many different experts and editors to ensure your information had some backing while now in the digital age almost anyone can post their information to the internet whether it is accurate or not. I don’t think that research is any harder or easier today than it has been in the past, today’s student researchers are just faced with different difficulties than those of the past.