"I've been fishing here all day, but haven't caught anything." "So why do you fish here?" "I like the location!"

Academia is now encountering a new generation of students who have experienced computers since early childhood, and for whom the web has become the preferred resource for all forms of information. For these students both point-and-click and the nonlinearity of hypertext are natural everyday experiences, while the complexity and tedium of traditional library research has become a foreign experience.

In extreme cases, these students continue to rely on on-line resources even when they offer inferior information, just as the above angler persists at a fruitless fishing hole. This can lead to the mistaken notion that all valuable information is on-line without the need to consult traditional print publications. For example, some Skidmore faculty have begun to impose quotas, requiring that no more than a specific percentage of the references cited in a report can come from on-line sources. Their goal is not to reject the web, but to remind students that valuable information exists within the library stacks.

For students like Sam who grew up with the Web, the idea of roaming library stacks is as quaint as the thought of writing with a quill pen. Even though libraries are organized and easily navigated, students prefer diving into the chaotic whirl of the Web to find information. -- Lori Leibovich, NY Times