Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Celebrating the use of internet resources

My latest op-ed piece is up at Bible and Interpretation:

Celebrating the Use of Internet Resources

I am surprised by how often I hear scholars making disparaging remarks about the internet. It is still commonplace to find university professors discouraging their students to use the internet in their research, and to play off electronic resources against print resources, as if the medium of delivery is itself an indicator of the quality of the resource in question . . . .

3 comments:

Timo S. Paananen said...

Bravo! Can you hear the cheering crowds of students and recently graduated under-30 in the background? Up to this point our only manner of coping with the disparaging old-skool attitude was to keep rolling our collective eyes until the headache began.

I'm going to print this article out and make anyone over-30 I happen to meet at the university to read it (aloud).

Pardon the exaggeration but I really like your clear-headed idea that "the medium of delivery" should not be "an indicator of the quality of the resource".

Mark Goodacre said...

Many thanks, Timo!

ScottinDurham said...

Agreed, as a former student working in other pursuits, it is difficult to deal with not having resources around me all the time, and the general fear about internet resources among the community. Although, I wonder if it stems from something a professor once said about SBL, "We get together once a year so that we can built our argument for the next!"