You’re looking for information on something — say, the number of movies that have been filmed in Ottawa. You fire up your Web browser, go to Google, type in a few words, and come up with the perfect answer, right?
Not so fast, my friend.
Although this neat story from Canada.com offers some alternatives to Google, it doesn’t mention librarians, or virtual reference projects such as My Web Librarian. I guess that was to much to ask. It does mention two names synonymous with search engines in the library world, Gary Price and Chris Sherman. It also contains a little guide to the difference in the major search engines.
[via Gary Deane]
Going Beyond Google
Actually the story does make reference to libraries…
“Here’s an example of the Invisible Web on our own doorstep: If you try to search for stories from older newspapers and magazine articles with regular search engines, chances are, you won’t find much. But go to the Ottawa Public Library site (www.library.ottawa.on.ca) click on Electronic Info, and behold a treasure trove of electronic full-text databases — sources people pay thousands of dollars to get access to.
Your library card number is your passport into this site. University students have even more access to databases through their library systems. Who says that libraries aren’t relevant in the Internet age?”
Common sense computing.
See also
http://csc.media.mit.edu/
http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/
oops!
looks like i need to take reading lessons!