The Haxtun-Fleming Herald - What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope

A family member completed her PhD requirements this week, successfully defending five years of reading, research and data gathering while suffering the occasional indignities that accompany any graduate program and its institutional biases. That has not changed much over the decades. The “good ol’ boy network” is alive and well, but progress is progress any way we measure it.

A three-and-a-half-decade gap separates her graduate experience from my own. The most significant change during that time is the way information is gathered and processed. Days spent in various university libraries unders...