It's the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions right now.
Yesterday was a semifinal game. The three players were all men under 30. Two had been multi-day winners in their original appearances, one for many days. The third had come through the Champions Wildcard process, but had shown his mettle with runaway wins over the other players in several games. They're three smart guys who know a lot of stuff.
The two multi-day winners are both currently in school, one an undergraduate and the other in grad school. The Champions Wildcard player is a journalist, but I assume he went to at least undergraduate college. But as I said, they're all clearly under 30.
All that is preface to my astonishment at a question that none of them could answer. It was in a category about library abbreviations, and was the easiest question ($200).
It was worded something like this: There are two organization systems used in libraries. One is the Dewey Decimal System. The other, with initials L.C., is called this.
And there stood three young men — all current or past college students — who must have never been oriented to how college libraries are organized, because none of them knew that the obvious answer was Library of Congress.
5 comments:
I think the answer to the question in your post title is “Not as often as they might.” And in some cases, “No.” When a course becomes a matter of slides, a study guide, and an exam that is the study guide, who needs books? I remember taking out stacks of books as an undergrad, as many as I could carry, to work on some project. I don’t see that these days.
That's the clear implication of the situation, but — but — but...
I'm a college (community college) librarian, and a) not as much as I wish they did, but b) I wouldn't expect any undergrad anywhere to remember that Library of Congress is the name of the organizational system used in college libraries in the US, unless they worked as library assistants. They won't remember that. I spent TONS of time happily wandering the stacks as an undergrad. My mom was a librarian. I took a library skills class in order to get a stack pass (a system they promptly eliminated after I got the required A). I am not at all sure that I could have told you the name of the system I understood and used on a daily basis.
Interesting! I must be weird, then... I'm pretty sure I knew that was the name of the classification system when I was an undergrad (back around 1980) and I definitely knew when I was in grad school.
I'm sure some of 'em remember, but I just don't think it's a piece of information they'll consider important enough to hang on to.
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