oh, what can we learn from this?

It starts out with this, "I threw away my dictionary. Tossed it. Considered my cluttered desk and decided it was time to take a critical look at what was crowding this valuable real estate." From there, Michelle Manafy discusses with us how the ubiquitous nature of Google, Wikipedia, and dictionary.com has changed her life. As the editor of a magazine (EContent) geared toward the information industry, Manafy talks about how the tools she used to use are no longer necessary given the changing nature of how (what some of us would call "ready reference") information is distributed today. For example, while she discusses the joy of thumbing through a thesaurus, the reality is that a printed dictionary isn't a required tool anymore because it's easier to look up words on the web while you are writing rather than thumbing through the printed dictionary. While this article doesn't really contain any surprises, this "slice of life" article vividly reminds us how much the world has changed, even in traditional areas such as journal editing.