Lost hours

[ladyofastolat]

It all started so innocently. Little did I think, when I made that first, casual, light-hearted dip into the shallow waters of this vast sink, that it would end like this. I thought I could control it. I don't even remember now what prompted that first little dabble, but I thought that was all it would be - one quick hit, and then I would walk away. But one hit leads to another, and another, and another. It has its good points, of course - oh how it has good points! The mind is expanded. The doors of perception open, and all things in the world are revealed to you. But the dark side... Oh, the dark side! One hit leads to another, and another, and another... and time flies without you noticing it, until you emerge much later, blinking at the wreckage of another day that you will never live again.

Curse you, Wikipedia!

Comments

[elemnar.livejournal.com]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wikipedia

*whistles innocently*

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm at work at the moment, and I strongly suspect that site will be blocked, but I'll look later. If I dare. ;-)

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

Bwah! I know that feeling. I've learned that I should avoid looking at the sources listed for the articles. That's where I get into the biggest trouble. One link leads to another...

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I was stupid enough to follow a link to a list. I can't even remember what I looked up first, but it took me to a list of UK natural disasters, which took me on a fascinating jaunt through sixteenth century sweating sickness epidemics, to various floods, to various distant volancoes, and so on.

[rubygirl29.livejournal.com]

So, you followed the white rabbit of Wiki? I've gotten lost there on my way to a reference question more than once. I keep telling myself that it's not a reliable source .... but it lures me in, nonetheless.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia. I know it has potential issues with reliability and bias, but I think it's excellent as a brief introduction to a subject that I know nothing about.

[rubygirl29.livejournal.com]

As a pop culture resource, it's invaluable. Hot tech information, too. I think it's gotten better as a resource, but we've still been instructed to inform patrons that it may not be 100% reliable. It's funny, because I'm reading the book, "Googled:the end of the world as we know it." It's like a trip through a time warp. I had just started by library career when the internet was gaining ground as a reference source. Now, where would we be without it?

Still searching through file drawers of crumbling newspaper clippings and wrestling with enormous phone books with teeny-tiny print! That's where. :-)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Part of me rather misses the days of questing for elusive information in books. I loved getting that obscure request, and having to spend ages following hunches and fleeting leads - and, of course, that wonderful sense of achievement when you finally find it. Of course, I wouldn't be without the internet, but at the same time I miss the thrill of the chase.

[rubygirl29.livejournal.com]

One of my first duties was to go through a bankers box of yellowed, crumbling newspaper clippings that some librarian in the distant past had annotated in a crabbed, copperplate hand. Why she thought these were pertinent escapes me to this day. But she held on to them like they were made of gold. I wished I had met this predecessor so I could as her what she found so invaluable in an article about hairnets! Did somebody ask her a question about the proper way to wear one?

I only know that in the last 11 years, nobody has once asked me about hairnets! Or snoods, for that matter. ;-)

But I bet I could find it on Google in less than half the time it would have taken me to sort through that file box!

As per my comment ... speaking of Wikipedia ...

[rubygirl29.livejournal.com]

In less than ten seconds ... LOL!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snood_(headgear)