Enough Keyword Searches. Just Answer My Question

Anonymous Patron writes “The New York Times: When it comes to digging up a specific name, date, phrase or price, search engines are unstoppable. The same is true for details from the previously concealed past. Yet for anything but simple keyword queries, even the best search engines are surprisingly ineffective.”

June 13, 2005 by Uncategorized 4

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4 Responses

  1. Cyberpunk Librarian says:
    June 13, 2005 at 8:59 pm

    42!

    While the author makes a good point, I’ve found that search engines are a lot like Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Not to be confused with Deep Throat from the Washington D.C. Traveler’s Guide to the Watergate Hotel.) For those who haven’t read the Guide, well get busy. But for now, suffice to say an advanced civilization builds a massive computer to answer the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

    The answer? 42.

    Turns out that the civilzation really didn’t know what the question was.

    This is true with a lot of search engine strategies. A few minutes ago I posted a reply here about celebrity military careers. It may surprise those who know me as a huge Hunter Thompson fan, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember if he was in the US Army or US Air Force. So my question, in effect, was “In which branch of the military did Hunter S. Thompson serve?” Obviously I didn’t actually type that in Google. I typed ‘”Hunter Thompson” +military’

    Got it on the first try. Now granted that’s not going to work for everything. But it still shows a need for information professionals. After all, we know how to ask the question in a manner that’ll get the answer. That’s why so many of us sat through Reference training to find out that a patron asking for books on Hawai’i are really searching for the phone number of a grocery store in Hilo. In HHGTTG, Philosophers posed the question to Deep Thought. I think we all see that the correct people to ask the question would have been librarians. 🙂

    Reply
  2. Grumpy Librarian says:
    June 13, 2005 at 11:31 pm

    Re: 42!
    And, of course, if you ask google the answer to life the universe and everything, you get…

    answer to life the universe and everything =

    Reply
  3. lahjik says:
    June 13, 2005 at 11:41 pm

    Re:42!
    This is why I like the idea behind Answers.com, mentioned only briefly in the article. I went there, typed in hunter thompson and read in the second sentence of the response that he started writing while in the Air Force.
    Not great for everything, but Answers comes closer to helping non-information experts than most search enginges, especially if the question is about a pretty commonly known who, what, or where.

    Reply
  4. Grumpy Librarian says:
    June 14, 2005 at 7:31 am

    Re:42!
    And the second result for Grumpy Librarian says: Grumpy Librarian (2277) is all alone in the world.

    Sigh.

    Reply

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