When Wikipedia Isn't Enough

Like many people, I am a huge fan of Wikipedia. It's always the first place I go to look something up, and the information I find there has very rarely led me astray. I know some people have reservations about its accuracy, given that almost anyone can edit it, but I'm always impressed by how thorough it is.

When it comes to my biology homework, however, Wikipedia unfortunately isn't an option. Most teachers won't accept it as a reliable source, meaning that when it came time to research five proteins, three lipids and three carbohydrates (and make a chart - yippee), I had to scroll past any Wikipedia links. Which, unfortunately, was most of the ones that seemed to contain the information I was looking for.

As I ran more and more Google searches, I came to realize that most of the websites available on this subject matter fell into three categories:

1. Websites for biology courses offered by other high schools and universities;
2. Scholarly articles so thick with science terms that I couldn't read more than a few sentences without hurting my brain, and
3. Wikipedia pages that, though exhaustively researched and footnoted, were still Wikipedia pages.

After a couple of hours, it dawned on me that I was going to have to face my nemesis: the library.

Don't get me wrong, I love the library. I probably take 10-15 books out of there a month - fiction and non-fiction, but generally books I'm reading because I want to. When it comes to researching at the library, though, I often feel like it's a colossal waste of time. I'm an impatient person, which is one reason why I find library research to be a pissoff; however, I also think I've let the internet spoil me.

I'm used to typing my question into a search engine and finding the answer in a minute, tops. When I can't locate the information I'm looking for in 10 minutes, I start to get annoyed. The thought of spending hours at the library, locating books that remotely apply to the subject at hand and then plowing through 500 extraneous pages to find the one or two facts I need is, at the very least, not very appealing.  

But, as I write this, I've started thinking of my gran, who used to be a librarian. (She and my grandfather actually met when they were working together at a library in England - a lovely story for another time). She began her career in Toronto, and eventually moved into Reader Services at the Toronto Public Library. In essence, it was her job to be the library's online catalogue. Students often came to her asking for information on specific subjects, and she had to know exactly where the books on the subjects they were looking for could be found. Most of the library's books came from Britain; during World War II, my gran told me recently, the shipment of books came to the halt. Gran and the researching students not only had to find the needle in the proverbial haystack, they also had to use old, dull needles, because new ones weren't making it across the Atlantic.

So, perhaps I can deal with going to the library once or twice. At least the information I need isn't stranded across an ocean for five years.