Anonymous Patron writes “Librarians should learn to love Google Traditional librarians worry that the Internet is increasingly the first choice of many information seekers. They argue that not everything is on the Internet and that what is there is not well organized. They point out that sites change or disappear without notice, and anyone can put up anything. They are concerned that people may just pick the first thing they see without evaluating it. All these arguments contain some truth, but they ignore how the quality, organization and ease of access of information on the Net have evolved.
Does this mean that libraries are obsolete? Of course not. It simply means that a wonderful tool exists to help locate much of what people are searching for without the need to go to a special place or ask an information expert.”
Update: 10/04 14:24 EST by B:Reg Required: email: [email protected] pass:lisnews1
Those wacky traditional librarians
Argh. Registration required. Oh well…
The article has a slightly quaint feel to it: Who are these traditional librarians? Yes, many librarians do (and should) caution that Google is not the be-all and end-all of research–but I’m not aware of many reference librarians who don’t also use and appreciate Google. (Sometimes to the exclusion of other interesting open-web search engines, but that’s another story.)
Re:Those wacky traditional librarians
I added a mail/pass
This is another one of those stories that you can also read via google news link, at this time.
Googley Eyes
I thought I already did love Google! I sure seem to use it a lot and it usually gets the job done pretty well most of the time. Even patrons who know and use Google regularly don’t always know how to really utilize it to refine and get the most of a search. More than once I’ve had a patron tell me they searched Google, but couldn’t find anything. Turns out they didn’t know Boolean searching and adding and removing and refining. It’s kind of like someone can use a chisel to clean door frames while another person could use the same chisel to carve a work of art. (Not that my searches are works of art, but they’re usually far better constructed than most patron’s.)
That said, like a chisel, Google can cut you down sometimes. Sure I can type in a multiword search with Boolean operators and find just what I want 95% of the time. It’s that other 5% that I want to get up, take a trip to the Google offices, knock on Dr. Schmidt’s door, and then, when he opens the door, I want to kick his ass. A few days ago, I searched for what I thought was a simple request and found absolutely nothing like what I was after. After half an hour and a string of search terms as long as my arm, I gave up and did what I should have done after the first five minutes; searched my OPAC.
Google is a great tool, a powerful tool. But it ain’t the only tool, and it ain’t the only search engine out there. Especially in the area of image searching, I’ve had fantastic luck searching Altavista Images and AllTheWeb Images. My dream tool would be something I could type a search into and it sends it to Google Images, Altavista Images, and AllTheWeb Images and then sends it all back to me sans repeats.
Re:Those wacky traditional librarians
http://www.bugmenot.com
There is also a great extension for the firefox browser that puts a search link to bugmenot in the right-click menu (WIN): find a registration page, right click, choose bugmenot, a separate window with login info comes up.