One German POW named Georg Gärtner escaped from a camp in New Mexico and stayed in the US for the rest of his life. He surrendered in 1985 and eventually became a US citizen.
A few observations from helping teenagers in the library:
1. I routinely encounter young people who have never used a book index before. So I teach them.
2. Those of us who grew up using physical card catalogs have an advantage in internet searching. We were implicitly taught how to keyword, which is essential in library database searching. Younger people try to use library databases like Google and get frustrated. So I teach them.
3. For a while, we kept a paper newspaper at the reference desk to show to students who had never seen one before.
4. On that subject, those of us who grew up working with print had an easier time understanding what newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals are. Through a computer screen, and especially through a library database, they look pretty much the same.
5. As I've said this before at Neatorama and elsewhere: a previous generation didn't know how to find information and knew that they didn't know. So they'd go to the library and ask a librarian. One of the great challenges of information literacy education is that a younger generation doesn't know how to find information but is convinced that it does. It is common for people to say that all information is just a quick Google search away--a perspective that is terribly, terribly incorrect.
6. Terminology changes. It is common for younger people to say that they want to "rent" a book when they mean "check out." My best guess is that they are working from early memories of going to video rental stores and renting DVDs. This gets complicated for college campuses that offer textbook rental because then the librarian has to find out precisely what the student is trying to acquire, and how.
1. I routinely encounter young people who have never used a book index before. So I teach them.
2. Those of us who grew up using physical card catalogs have an advantage in internet searching. We were implicitly taught how to keyword, which is essential in library database searching. Younger people try to use library databases like Google and get frustrated. So I teach them.
3. For a while, we kept a paper newspaper at the reference desk to show to students who had never seen one before.
4. On that subject, those of us who grew up working with print had an easier time understanding what newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals are. Through a computer screen, and especially through a library database, they look pretty much the same.
5. As I've said this before at Neatorama and elsewhere: a previous generation didn't know how to find information and knew that they didn't know. So they'd go to the library and ask a librarian. One of the great challenges of information literacy education is that a younger generation doesn't know how to find information but is convinced that it does. It is common for people to say that all information is just a quick Google search away--a perspective that is terribly, terribly incorrect.
6. Terminology changes. It is common for younger people to say that they want to "rent" a book when they mean "check out." My best guess is that they are working from early memories of going to video rental stores and renting DVDs. This gets complicated for college campuses that offer textbook rental because then the librarian has to find out precisely what the student is trying to acquire, and how.