2008 Woodie Awards
Serial Scribblings: Internet offers invaluable education opportunities
Sam Koch '11
Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Opinion
Call me a dork, but I love libraries.
Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated by their timeless qualities. During vacations to various cities, public libraries were always top on my sight-seeing list (though, shockingly, not on the lists of the rest of my family).
When I was searching for colleges, the library was always my first stop on campus-regardless of the itinerary detailed during guided tours.
There's something about a library's atmosphere of academic energy, the untold knowledge that each of its shelves contain, and the ability for anybody-regardless of age, gender, or education level-to access its contents that makes me grin every time I enter a library's doors.
So when I received an invitation on Facebook this week to join a group promoting the open education resources movement, the bibliophile in me jumped for joy.
Similar to the media found in libraries, open education resources are entirely free for public use and offer learning opportunities to anyone who has access to a computer; the only "library card" needed is a registration and password.
While the Internet can never fully capture the essence of sitting in a hushed library, it has provided an enormous outpouring of programs designed to provide universal education to users.
While, in my opinion, nothing beats the feel of opening a book and flipping through its pages, there is something enthralling about being able to access literature almost instantly through the computer. Currently, there are a handful of Web sites devoted to the publication and sharing of online books and texts.
The grandfather of these endeavors is Project Gutenberg, which holds goliath numbers of essays, novels, and classic texts-over 25,000 to be exact. Here, users can find a slew of reading material that satisfies the reading requirements of everything from the history of political thought to the birth of psychology.
A similar site, Bartelby, allows its users to read everything from Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," to papers published by the fathers of modern science, to the more eclectic essays like Edward Morton's "Remarks on the Subject of Lactation" (you know you're curious).
Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated by their timeless qualities. During vacations to various cities, public libraries were always top on my sight-seeing list (though, shockingly, not on the lists of the rest of my family).
When I was searching for colleges, the library was always my first stop on campus-regardless of the itinerary detailed during guided tours.
There's something about a library's atmosphere of academic energy, the untold knowledge that each of its shelves contain, and the ability for anybody-regardless of age, gender, or education level-to access its contents that makes me grin every time I enter a library's doors.
So when I received an invitation on Facebook this week to join a group promoting the open education resources movement, the bibliophile in me jumped for joy.
Similar to the media found in libraries, open education resources are entirely free for public use and offer learning opportunities to anyone who has access to a computer; the only "library card" needed is a registration and password.
While the Internet can never fully capture the essence of sitting in a hushed library, it has provided an enormous outpouring of programs designed to provide universal education to users.
While, in my opinion, nothing beats the feel of opening a book and flipping through its pages, there is something enthralling about being able to access literature almost instantly through the computer. Currently, there are a handful of Web sites devoted to the publication and sharing of online books and texts.
The grandfather of these endeavors is Project Gutenberg, which holds goliath numbers of essays, novels, and classic texts-over 25,000 to be exact. Here, users can find a slew of reading material that satisfies the reading requirements of everything from the history of political thought to the birth of psychology.
A similar site, Bartelby, allows its users to read everything from Agatha Christie's "The Mysterious Affair at Styles," to papers published by the fathers of modern science, to the more eclectic essays like Edward Morton's "Remarks on the Subject of Lactation" (you know you're curious).
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