Billions in fact. In our modern technological age, the internet sits as a crown of information over the heads of its users. Through the use of social media, news sites, and blogs, people have better access to information than could have been imagined hundreds of years ago. There is a slight problem, however. The internet has a massive volume of information because of the millions of users it has. This volume of information is daunting to anyone trying to use the internet to research a topic to any depth. Also, because of the millions of websites to choose from, finding the correct reliable sites has become a bit of an issue. But fear not, because just like many issues modern computer and IT specialists have conquered, there is a solution. And it is as easy as a click of a button.
It is all about organization. A normal session on the internet is filled with checking email, blogs, entertainment sites, and other miscellaneous sites, all of which are not well connected. This usually means that time is wasted every instance you get online, but no longer. With organizational Web 2.0 sites like Google Reader, life on the web is much more organized. This allows you to spend more time actually learning and using the information and less time finding it, which is the bain of every student doing a research topic.
It is interesting that sites like Google Reader (and to a lesser extent Social Media in general) have become popular, noting that all they really do is add a level of internet accessibility via easily understood interfacing and organization. As archivists, a lot of our practice seems to be correct organization of historical materials. As historical archives appear more and more likely to become digitized, proper organization of materials online will probably become a more prevalent issue. One could post archival images and materials on the web in a blog format, and use tools like Google Reader to link them together. In my own department, we use a photo sharing application that show the digitized items of our archival materials. But what we could do additionally to posting the archival materials is to link these images or collects to other collections from other universities and archives, so that one could get a wide range of collected materials of which to use for research, for entertainment, ect.
In my own department, we have also moved our office to a separate floor. Our old office space was very cramped and had limited areas for storage. Organization has become an issue again for us, because we have a lot more space. We still are contemplating how to use the space to optimize its efficiency, but for now we are chugging away at putting things in their new proper place. I guess its why I have organization on the mind.
