Gone and forgotten: where has the “literature” gone?

Excerpt

To anyone engaged in the training of the next generation of basic and clinical scientists, urging students to gain “command of the literature” has become somewhat of an exercise in frustration. Consider for a moment taking heed to a mentor’s encouragement a mere 40 years ago, when libraries were occupied by willing, able and capable young minds, hell-bent on devouring articles from a manageable collection of journals relevant to the field of research upon which their original work would be based. Many small coins and a copying machine at hand were all that would be needed to collect, process, and gain command of the scholarly literature. Some will recall the days of reprint requests through snail mail as a worthwhile and profitable means to attain the same goal-collecting reprints of articles that would, in fact, be assimilated into the scholarly mindset. Fast forward to the computer age—the dizzying pace in proliferation of journals and articles now renders the contemporary student with immediate access to many thousands of key-word driven compilations that, at a finger stroke, bring a recent paper into the visual field of those willing, able, and capable young minds. But at what cost? …