I have a unique gift for crafting soporific titles for books, articles, and presentations. So it came as some relief that the good people at the Globe and Mail crafted a headline altogether more eye-catching than what I’d proposed for my op-ed on how humanists are dealing with the problem of “too much information”.

This is the second op-ed that the Globe has published from me in two months. The first piece focused on the importance of sharing our research; this present one highlights the challenge of doing research in “the infinite archive”. Of the two, the first resonated more widely and deeply with readers.

Pointing to the opportunities for knowledge creation that emerge as a result of skilled use of digital tools is less evocative than calling us to share the results of our research. But we will need to be proficient with those tools if we want to share what we’ve seen in the vast information ocean in which we are all now swimming.