The Guardian has posted this little exercise, comparing the time it takes to answer certain questions using Google, the phone or a library (but not the helpful advice of a librarian who may have helped improve the library’s times no end).
It reminded me of those reference question tests I did at library school. The memories of failed reference questions meant that I was thinking “why didn’t he go straight for the Whitaker’s Almanack?” on question 4.
So the lesson is:
Don’t use the phone for research. Or maybe the person doing the phone research just didn’t know where to go as well as the Google or library guy. The same people used the same method for each question, so while the article might be entertaining it doesn’t really tell you much.
Really, it wasn’t “Librarians vs. Google” because the guy doing the search at the library wasn’t supposed to use outside assistance (he was disqualified on one question for using someone else’s suggestion of where to look).
What is @ your library?
This exercise conflates “library” with “print materials”. If you consider that you can use both Google AND books at the library, the library certainly comes out as the better place to do research. That is, of course, if there’s not a long line or complicated sign-up system for the computer.
More wrong with the Guardian story than that
Not only does the Guardian story handicap the library person, one of the answers (where the library “won”) makes an absolutely incorrect assumption: That Who’s Who lists every book written by an honoree.
That may be true for the world edition, but I’d be surprised. It’s certainly not true for Who’s Who in America; the biography form allows for three books, and you can sneak others in in following years. Maybe there are exceptions for people whose claim to fame is purely book writing.