ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


4  /  C&RLNews ■ January 2001

I n t h e snew 

Do you remember note cards? Those cards 
used to copy— by hand— pertinent facts, fig­
ures, and quotes as w e gathered material in 
support o f our research papers. As much as I 
hated the hand-copying, the cards did force 
me to b e  selective in the information I gath­
ered and helped me organize my thoughts prior 
to writing. These cards were replaced with the 
photocopies bearing yellow-highlighted text.

Now even photocopying is being phased 
out by “cut and paste.” The 8th graders I work 
with through Girl Scouts start all research by 
jumping on the Web. Relevant information gets 
copied and pasted into a waiting Word docu­
ment. Throw in a few transition sentences, 
paragraphs, and voilà— a finished paper!

Now Questia, an Internet start-up due to 
launch this month, plans to take cut and paste 
to the next level (see page 5). Launching with 
50,000 full-text digital titles in the liberal arts, 
the service, marketed directly to undergradu­

ates, aims to make paper writing even easier. 
W ith a Q uestia subscription, students can 
search the full-text for the pertinent phrase, 
copy it, and paste it with an automatically gen­
erated citation coming along with the selected 
text. Although Questia’s goal o f 250,000 books 
is not a huge database given the millions o f 
items published, if I w ere a student I ’d want a 
subscription to it. It will be interesting to see 
what impact Questia has on research papers. 
Will most freshman papers use only sources 
found in Questia? Will professors start insist­
ing that papers contain at least three non- 
Questia sources to try and vary their students’ 
work? It has the sound o f a useful tool; it will 
b e  fun to see how academe embraces it.

A special thanks to Kit Dusky for once again 
volunteering her time to compile an index to 
C&RL News.

— Mary Ellen K. Davis 
E d itor-in -ch ief, medavis@ala.org

mailto:medavis@ala.org