It hit my about half way through this semester: I have stopped caring about being in school. I am exhausted by the number of minor time-filling assignments, and I really want to get out to work and just start helping people.

If there is only one thing I did learn, it is how to find enough sources to actually teach yourself about an area, and to do so under time constraints. All of the insights I have had about this career, and all the things I am passionately interested in mostly come from reading on my own, beyond the readings for class. Except maybe for Information Literacy, which was a random class which changed my thoughts about librarianship and education.

I just have to continually tell myself there is less than a month left, and then I can take a long break. But I really do miss reading my own books and developing my own thoughts. My thoughts are going off in new directions, but the rest of my body is stuck coming to class every day.

I ask this questions as I read a great book by Patrick Wilson, Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry Into Cognitive Authority (1983). It examines in detail the process by which we come to recognized others’ ideas as correct ones. It follows another really great little book by Wilson called Two kinds of power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control (1968) which has a really great section on how it is that we decide on the subject of a work. Both of these are highly relevant, and both of them I discovered for myself.

Or the theoretical works of Henry Evelyn Bliss, particularly The Organization of Knowledge and the System of the Sciences (1929). Difficult, yes. Dense, yes. Interesting, thought-provoking, yes. Another great book–this one was suggested for a class, but by a teacher which explicitly goes against the current–is Living with books: The Art of Book Selection (2nd ed. 1950) by Helen Haines. What a wonderful book of bibliographic love! Is basically a manual on how to look at books, how to evaluate them, how to weigh other’s evaluations of them.

So I question why things like there are ignored. I am sure there are more of them, but I don’t know them all. Why are important abstract works of this nature ignored? I am sure that the concrete nature of the profession has changed, but are we not qualified to evaluate the foundations of that work? Are they no longer applicable to today’s world? I would argue no.

To tell you the secret, it is my plan to glean ideas from these old works to inform my future writing. Not only will I seem well read (because I will cite them), but in reality all of these new ideas people pass around have foundations in older works.

However, I can’t do it anymore. I feel lost. I have all of these readings which I can’t keep track of. I read half way though one reading, find an interesting reference, and because I am already on the computer I do a quick Google Scholar search for the paper, leaving me all turned around from where I was. I am trying to take notes, but it just isn’t as convenient to me as having the articles right there to consult.

Plus, I have to start writing tomorrow, and I am already anxious about the prospects. Flipping back and forth between the reader and my LaTeX processor seems like a nightmare. If you don’t know how I work (maybe I’ll take a picture next time), let’s say it looks like an printing press exploded. I like to make piles of materials on the floor, with each pile standing for a different part of my argument, so I know exactly where to turn to. When I am done with a paper I place it in a final pile so it doesn’t get in the way again: this way I know I have cited everything I wanted to.

The thing is, I am a digital native. I have this blog, a Flickr account and I use Facebook. I have been chatting and writing online since I was 13 or so. However, I think that the process of reading and writing for the university is so tied up with the medium of print that, for me at least, I have to work in a print world to be continually successful at it.

So, I figure I can just suck it up, buy an extra stack of paper, and print them when I get home. Actually, the prospect is exciting me. Perhaps I can reward myself with a filing cabinet, now that I am writing things that actually interest me and that I will want to keep.

This has been all over the news here in Toronto, but I have not read about it in any of my feeds yet, which is weird given the rush to get libraries on Facebook.

Here is the story. Chris Avenir, a first year engineering student at Ryerson University, was charged with 147 counts of academic misconduct because he was the administrator of a Facebook study group for a chemistry class. The 147 stems from the fact that the group had that many students in it when the administration found out about it.

The school argues that, because the site of the group said “If you request to join, please use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted,” and the 10 percent assignments were to be done individually, then he was soliciting cheating. Students and others argue that Facebook is only a virtual meeting place and is just the same as forming a face-to-face study group, which the university has implicitly allowed in similar circumstances as this.

The administration argues that cheating is cheating, regardless of where it happens. “This is being painted as a generational issue and it’s not,” said James Norrie, director of the Toronto university’s School of Information Technology. “We are not a bunch of old farts who are afraid of technology.”

Two Questions

First, should the student be expelled, considering 1. He did not start the group, but only took over its administration after a time; 2. No actual answers to any of the questions were posted, and it is my understanding that each student received a different assignment, so in actuality exact answers couldn’t have been posted anyway. 3. 147 counts? Just because there were that many in the group? Come on.

The second question is whether we should consider this cheating at all, or, does the defense of “it is only a virtual study group” hold up? Don’t have an answer, because I don’t know the motivation of every student, particularly Chris Avenir, and he should not be held accountable for the misconduct of every student. He didn’t “facilitate” cheating, like some college movie where the frat house steals the exam. If any one facilitated something it was Facebook itself.

Implications for Libraries

Some colleagues of mine at school were discussing the implications for libraries setting up a presence on Facebook. Should the school set up policies on virtual collaboration before hand (we thought that he was not guilty unless they has specified so before hand). What about the library setting up a Facebook group: is it important for us us to make sure that no dishonesty goes on in the forums? Do we need to establish explicit policy before hand?

If so, is it important for us to make sure no dishonesty goes on in our physical space? I think this must happen every day. So why is there a difference when we are somewhat responsible for the virtual space we set up? What is the theoretical difference between the two?

Update: If you want to rally for the student, ChrisDidntCheat.com