Information Behavior; Eastern Chant; Blitz

Working this weekend, I had an e-mail from a student at Everest.  He needed three book references for an essay about "online vs. traditional education."  What I usually do with a question like this is to help the person find a bibliography to work with.  It is up to them to find and choose the books they will use.

One of the big disadvantages of getting a degree online from a school with no "brick and mortar"  location near you is that the school cannot provide you with library services.  Fortunately, Tallahassee has two universities and a community college, so online students are not short of college-level libraries.  But sometimes they try the public library first, and our collection isn't suited to the needs of college students.

I should have taken the hint from his question, but I initially searched using the term that was in use when I was in school in the '90's, "distance learning".  I was puzzled when I found three or four bibliographies, all of them limited to sources from the '90's, up to 2001 or so.  These were way too old to offer.  Surely research was still being done on the topic.  Then it occurred to me that perhaps the term, "distance" was no longer used.  I searched using "online learning or education" and found a good bibliography.


R. and I often listen to Millennium of Music on public radio on Sunday night.  This week the program featured a recording of Eastern Slavonic chant by the monks of the Monastery of Chevetogne.  I love liturgical chant, and theirs is among the most beautiful I have heard.  It is streaming at their web site, so give it a listen.  The first time I heard it, though, was not on Millenium, but on Music From The Hearts of Space, back in the late '80's, when they did a show on Russian Orthodox chant.  HOS seems to have dropped off the public radio schedule in recent years, and now I see that they have a pay-wall.


I'm afraid that Orwell's Diaries have defeated me.  The book is due Wednesday, and I am only half-way through them, to the end of 1940 and the Blitz.  I'll get it again when the hold list has run out, and turn instead to our collection of his essays for now.  I will mention in passing that one of the best diaries of the London Blitz is Few Eggs And No Oranges, by Vere Hodgson.