LISNews: Librarian News

Why Google and Other Humans Don't Read Your Book Reviews:

Try running this very specific Google search - "Manhood" by Mels van Driel review - and you will not find the L.A. Times among the results - at least not within first three pages that humans would care to flip through. How come might you ask? Well the answer is simple - there is nothing whatsoever that tells Google that this post is a book review about this particular book.

And this is not just an isolated problem with this book review from this particular newspaper. The issue is widespread across all major U.S. and international media outlets. Either due to lack of tools or lack of understanding how search engines and other software works, people notoriously don't make their content discoverable.

From a Citizen Media Law Project blog post:

A short time ago, the American Library Association (ALA) released the latest update to the Public Library Funding & Technology Study, a long running survey of public access to the Internet. The survey reveals that public libraries are the only point of free Internet access in the great majority of communities, and many libraries do not have enough bandwidth to meet the needs of their patrons. The entire situation is an embarrassing reminder that the US has a hideous Internet access rate.

While this problem is a common refrain (see here for similar examples of this story dating back to 2000), the current recession has pushed many formerly employed users onto free networks. In response, libraries are either capping the bandwidth of certain kinds of content (no longer just a euphemism for porn) or cutting public access altogether.