We have two high school age children, one of which lives with us full time. Man have they got it easy! Think back... 80s... 90s... What were your sources? Mine were heavy books that could kill a small rodent if you dropped them on top of them. And forget researching on the internet! Remember geocities? That was pretty much the extent of our internet research database. Some universities had information on the web but you had to have student credentials to access it. Sometimes we would get lucky and the encyclopedias would come with CD-ROMs that had searchable articles, but the would be at least a year out of date.
Our youngest today? Just hops on over to the Google search engine and types in what she wants to read about. Pages and pages of results populate in seconds. She can do an entire research paper with PowerPoint in a quarter of the time it took me. My research papers? The school libraries weren't sufficient. We had to put on pants, get in the car, and have mom drive us to the city's library and hope there were enough credible books on the subject we had (now regrettably) chosen. We had to physically look up where to find the books with the card catalog. A behemoth of a piece of furniture with tiny little fairy sized drawers filled front to back with notecards. They were sorted by author, title, and subject. When you finally found the one (or at least in the neighborhood of the one) you were looking for, it gave you a number. Three numbers, a decimal, two numbers. Then you had to walk over to one of the helpful signs posted and decipher the code for where exactly this was located. It was like a free scavenger with every paper! I still understand the Dewey Decimal System. That doesn't mean I like it.
Not to mention we had to hump our notebooks, class books, and pens (like peasants!) in and out of the city library. There were no tablets or laptops or cellphones with cameras to take notes with. Handwritten was the way to go. And heaven forbid you forget to write down your citing information on that one obscure book that had that one factoid you couldn't check out but could read only inside the library. It had to stay in the building. It was special. Then you just knew you were getting points off for lack of complete citation. But you were not going to go through the ordeal of going back there to get it!
I once completed a research paper that required fifty notecards. Not fifty citations, fifty actual, 4" x 6" index cards with individual notes on each one. And believe me, Page Chamberlin counted every single one. They had to be turned in inside the back pocket of the three pronged, two pocket folder required for the project. No emails, no digital copies, physical paper. The front pocket required a copy of our abstract, double spaced (naturally) and single page. The aforementioned cards in the back pocket, and the actual paper, complete with title page and citations in the middle. And PowerPoint? That was something people in high powered corporate jobs used. We didn't use any of that stuff. We just turned in our folder and prayed we hadn't lost a card.
Once I needed to gather information for a really obscure subject. To access the books I needed for the project do you know what I did? I finally located the books after asking several different libraries. They were in the library at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. I was in my first year of undergrad at Martin College in Pulaski, Tennessee. I was not a student at MTSU. I could not access the information through their online database. I called the campus library and asked if there was any way I could possibly peruse those books. That is when I found out (at the time, it may have changed) as MTSU is a state school they allow state citizens to come in and take advantage of their library. They cannot check out any items but they can enter the library and read books or use other resources. Welp, I happen to be a citizen of the state of Tennessee since birth, so I gathered two of my girlfriends who were also in my class and needed more source material and we trekked about seventy miles from Pulaski, Tennessee to Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We piled into my manual transmission, two door 1992 Toyota Tercel with our books, notebooks, backpacks, papers, pens, highlighters, and Chapstick, and off we went.
We spent six hours at the MTSU library and a fortune in 10c each copies to make sure we had all the information we needed. And when we were done, after dark and the library closing, we piled back in my car and headed back. My daddy always told me not to be out after dark in a strange city but you do what you gotta do. We did all get our papers turned in on time. And if I remember correctly I got a B, no small feat from Brantley Harwell.
So I guess I'm old and I'm tired and you have got to get off my lawn, but especially after watching our youngest attend online school due to the pandemic I am struck by how drastically things have changed. Time moves fast and it doesn't stop. I hope you can remember how we used to do things fondly while still adjusting to the present. It can be hard to do.
Be well, y'all.