Barre with Justine

“too much learning may just muddle your mind. We should learn a little and work with that.”

~ Sri Swami Satchidananda

“Information overload” (IO) was fretted about a great deal by librarians when I first joined the profession in the early mid-2000s. It was the time period when the print reference collection was slowly being whittled away and when expansive new resources (Early English Books Online comes to mind!) promised to open up vast swathes of information previously accessible only to those who could travel to the most prestigious libraries to research.

On the one hand, IO has become more frightening than we could have every imagined! Worrying about the glut of information on Google and Wikipedia now seems quaint when information seems to haunt us now, tapping our shoulders with push notifications from websites or pulling us deep into citation chains or online discussions.

On the other hand, as Bawden and Robinson note in their 2009 article on the topic, information overload is a “perennial problem” in the history of information (182). The feeling that it is impossible to navigate the onslaught of information being produced or stay on top of the knowledge in one’s field seems to be a common thread of human experience.

When I did my Yoga Teacher Training in 2020, we were tasked with reading and reflecting on the The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. It is surprising how much of the advice given in these nearly 4000-year old writings has relevance for our lives today. (for some background on the Yoga Sutras, this is a great overview of the history)

What does this look like for college/university students?

In my own experience working with students, I’ve observed the following struggles when students approach writing research papers:

• what is relevant for my research?
• what is essential to read?
• what are perspectives that I’m missing or should include?
• where does my voice fit in all of this?
• how much is enough?

ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy touches on information overload and addresses some of these common struggles faced by students when they approach research and writing in higher education. Several frames stand out as relating to information overload (or what Bawden and Robinson also refer to as the “paradox of choice”):

• In Research as Inquiry, the knowledge practice to “determine an appropriate scope of investigation” suggests the need to create some structure around the research process.
• In Scholarship as Conversation, the disposition “recognize they are often entering into an ongoing scholarly conversation and not a finished conversation” highlights the need to accept that new information is being continually produced and the impossibility of reading/discovering it all; this frame also invites the student into the conversation, providing a voice for their own ideas and reflections.

I think there is more space for librarians to reflect on how we can help students manage the abundance of information and even – though it may have a touch of ‘New Age-yness” to it – encourage them to listen to their inner voice.

Discovering the “museum and garden” inside each of us…

The quote at the top of the page is from Yoga Sutra 2.27 and further in the book, Swami Satchidananda writes:

All the scents are within us. All the beautiful music is within us. All art is inside. Why should we search, running after museums and gardens when every museum and garden is inside us?

While I am no longer an active researcher in any one of the academic disciplines being taught at university, I love researching fitness and wellness topics. New study on strength training? I’m looking it up right now! New book on superfoods? Already on order! A new training on motivating fitness participants? Count me in!

There are times when it feels that I’m constantly amassing new things to read, learn and practice. So much so that it can end up clouding my own judgment and creativity. This is one reason why the quote from Sutra 2.27 resonates for me. It’s easy to forget our own experience and knowledge and rely too heavily on the proliferation of information that exists outside of ourselves.

On the surface this can seems somewhat flippant and silly. University libraries subscribe to expensive journals and databases in order to provide access to the best research and knowledge that is available! We purchase book collections that are extensively researched and written by experts in the disciplines! The quote at the start of this post seems ridiculous…why would we learn just a little when we could learn a LOT?!

Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload writes: “The information age has yielded great advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation and many other fields. But the problem is twofold. One, we are assaulted with more information than any one of us can handle. Two, beyond the overload, too much information often leads to bad decisions.”

At the end of the day we can only give our best energy and focus to a finite amount of information. When we are constantly on the hunt for more, we lose our own creativity and capacity to reflect on what we HAVE found. In my mind, it’s worth being satisfied with a little less in order to truly comprehend and apply the information we have. And there may be something profound and beautiful within ourselves, ready to rise to the surface when we take a moment to pause and ‘unmuddle’ our minds.

References

Bawden, David, and Lyn Robinson. “The Dark Side of Information: Overload, Anxiety and Other Paradoxes and Pathologies.” Journal of Information Science, vol. 35, no. 2, Apr. 2009, pp. 180–191

Koltay, Tibor. “The Bright Side of Information: Ways of Mitigating Information Overload.” Journal of Documentation, vol. 73, no. 4, July 2017, pp. 767–775,

Satchidananda, and Patañjali. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. Rev. ed., Integral Yoga Publications, 2012.

Weber, Hannes, et al. “Information-seeking behaviour and academic success in higher education: Which search strategies matter for grade differences among university students and how does this relevance differ by field of study?” Higher Education, vol. 77, no. 4, Apr. 2019,