Thursday, October 22, 2009

Advice on life from MLIS textbooks

I was reading one of my textbooks, Text Information Retrieval Systems, and I was surprised to come across this philosophical reflection on human nature in what is largely a dry text that spends most of its time making my head hurt with math equations and computer programming discussion: 

"In most human endeavors it is desirable to begin with a clear understanding of the objective.  Yet, we often do not.  We marry, buy houses, design software, undertake writing assignments, and certainly begin searches for information without necessarily knowing exactly what we want to accomplish."

So now, in addition to borning me and making my head hurt my textbook is condescending to me.  GREAT!  I also like how they put getting married on equal footing wtih doing homework.  Is it just me or do the authors of this text have some weird priorities?

Meadow, C. T., Boyce, B. R., Kraft, D. H., & Barry, C. (2008). Text Information Retrieval Systems. United Kingdom: Emerald.

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