{{Sean}} You and S are in my thoughts.

Deep, complicated, interconnected, academic research, and I do it all through the school's library databases

::head explodes a little bit, gets up on soapbox::

If one of my students, or one of the faculty members tells me they've researched their paper using only the databases -- and folks the legal ones are the best ones I've ever seen for content and search algorithym -- I know that they've only skimmed the top of what is actually out there. Estimates are about 20% of what is on our shelves (contemporary) is in the full-text databases. Example: Lexis and Westlaw have about 300-350 full text journals in the databases . . . we subscribe to about 1500 titles, indexed in the legal equivalent of the Reader's Guide, and we're a small law library.

As a librarian, a faculty member, a teacher, etc., I'm horrified by the thought of how academics of all shapes and sizes use this same 20% over and over again without ever seeing anything else. I weep for the knowledge that's getting lost every time a student tells me to "forget it" because he or she can't be bothered to walk to the stacks and get that article that addresses their issue exactly, because there's one online that's kinda-sorta okay enough.

::kicks soapbox back under bed::

(Yeah, I wouldn't want the person I am now grading the papers I wrote in college, either.)

Recently in CJ's karate class, the instructor was calling out movements and times and the kids were supposed to face that direction and do the movement. You could tell half the class had no idea which direction 3 o'clock was. BUT I was impressed that the sensai did not allow them to use that as an excuse for being slow.

Totally understandable. Hopefully the next one...

Thanks. There aren't a lot of jobs around here for what he wants to do, but we'll see.

I don't think I've ever bought a digital watch. I like hands and a swiss army-style watch with a 24 hour dial is my favorite. That said just now I discovered an advantage of digial watches. I sat down at the computer and said, "holy cow is that really the time?" I must have pulled out my watch stem at some point today and I was 1/2 hour behind.

For the librarians...

I had to write a paper for my Econ class last fall. I had a topic I was really interested in, but couldn't find anything more than passing references in any of the online resources. So I went to the local public library, tried to figure out approximately where in the Dewey decimals it would fall, and wandered the stacks. I still couldn't figure out how to narrow it to the specific topic that I wanted, but while I was wandering I found a whole shelf of another topic that I found pretty interesting and could use for Econ. If I hadn't gone to the Stacks I probably would have just BS'd my way through and written a crappy paper, instead I wrote an 'A' paper (I actually think it was a 'B' paper, but who am I to argue with posted grades?), and actually learned info I hadn't previously had.

IOW, Stacks are cool.

I love going through the stacks. I use the computer a lot but for any decent research project I will go to the library, either at school or at work.

Telling time analogly is odd. I can look at my watch, see the position of the hands, and know what part of the day I'm in. But if someone asks me what time it is, I have to look at my watch again and translate the symbolic time into a number. I don't think in a number the first time I look at my watch.

Sparky, I don't doubt you are correct, but I don't have time to do the kind of research that I would have to do were I researching a legal case or preparing a dissertation. For the kind of research I need to do as a teacher and the kind of research my students need to do as high school kids, the online databases are far and away a better resource than the typical school library with a card catalog ever was. ITA that at a certain level of study (and especially in legal cases, I would think), that wouldn't be enough. I wasn't clear about that, sorry--didn't mean to make your head explode.

I'm allergic to the nickel that's on the back of most digital watches, so I'm an analog girl all the way.

I've been wearing the same analog watch for, um, 35 years now. I wind it every night (that Luddite tag is NEVER going to close, is it?).