Life beyond Google

Pete writes “From the BBC comes this piece that anecdotal evidence suggests that thanks to Google, the web offers information on everything to everyone. But, we have yet to see empirical evidence to back up such claims, argues Dr Eszter Hargittai of Northwestern University.”

April 6, 2004 by Uncategorized 4

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4 Responses

  1. gwendy says:
    April 7, 2004 at 12:26 am

    Third Problem
    I’d like to add a third problem to this list. It also assumes that people will be able to evaluate the source of the information they find. You not only have to be able to find the information, but to decide if it is a credible source.

    I use Google regularly and find it to be a great tool. I mostly use it to search for everday trivia and computer information. I often have to sort through a lot of garbage to find the information I need unless it is located on a popular website. I certainly would never use it as a source for finding scholarly articles and wonder how students can do this.

    Reply
  2. thesaint says:
    April 7, 2004 at 2:10 am

    Re:Third Problem
    I certainly would never use it as a source for finding scholarly articles and wonder how students can do this.

    You don’t say what age group you’re working with, but I’m guessing they can’t.

    Reply
  3. djfiander says:
    April 7, 2004 at 3:52 am

    Re:Third Problem

    It’s not good at finding scholarly articles, but it’s surprisingly good at verifying citations. I’m always surprised when somebody comes in with an ancient wonky partial citation, and we can find more complete details by typing in the first author’s name and some of the keywords from the article title. This is especially useful since we moved our Science Citation Index collection out of the reference section and down to the periodicals on another floor. Of course, I could probably use the exercise to go look at the true source, but there you go.

    Reply
  4. noisylibrarian says:
    April 7, 2004 at 4:10 am

    Re:Third Problem
    You make a good point. I use Google a lot to figure out what my patron’s are really asking for, since Google is much more forgiving then our catalog. Amazon and B&N are also good for this, though.

    Reply

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