The more I read, the less I know

The more I read and learn, the more I realise I don't know. I know that personal and professional development does not stop when you leave Uni, but given the vast storehouses of information out there, I'm not even going to scratch the surface.

But what is even more interesting to me is that, most of the time we don't know we don't know, so we are unable to ask meaningful questions of those who do know. A state of ignorance is bliss, or just a blissful kind of ignorance?

Confused? For me it is quite a humbling experience - because I work in the Information Industry, therefore it stands to some kind of reason that I should know most things, or at least know where to go to find the answers. Before the Internet, I thought I had a pretty good handle on where to go to find the information that I and my clients needed. Books, Bibliographies, Indexes, Abstracts - if you've ever tried to search chemical abstracts by hand you will understand what I mean when I say that you have to become a very good lateral thinker, with a keen eye for detail if you want to find information of relevance and use.

But those early skills trawling through the reams of felled forests, has stood me in good stead with the advent of computer based databases (Dialog etc) and of course the Internet. Most people these days go straight to Google when they need something. I still prefer to go to my personal collection of reference books before turning on the computer. But that is not the norm these days. Even my kids go straight to Google despite my daily reminders that it's not all the on the Internet you know.

But it is getting somewhere close - vast libraries are opening up their catalogues to the search engines, some books have been digitised - long before Google got in on the act there was Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page - those books that are no longer in copyright can be found on sites like Gutenberg. And journal publishers are making articles, indexes and table of contents freely available for those who have the time and the knowledge of where to find them. And for the first time ever, there is a growing movement in online blogs, everyone can be a publisher in the electronic realms (and probably has), what before was kept hidden from prying eyes behind padlocked diaries and hidden memoirs are now being shared with the world. Now I don't know about you but I definitely won't have time to read everything there is to read. Which just makes my dilemma worse. Knowing what to read first.