Anna sends along this interesting piece from from the Albany (NY) Times Union. In lieu of learning effective search strategies, students want search engines that will read their minds and give them the results they’re looking for. The story specifically looks at results that were returned from students searching for Holocaust information.
“Students don’t want to go to the library anymore, they want to go to the computer and have it act like a librarian. But a librarian wouldn’t put a book about white supremacy on the bookshelves, presenting it like it’s an argument.”
and…
“So a “concept cluster” doesn’t sound all warm and fuzzy. It probably won’t try to off you, either.”
“For that, we’ll have to wait a few more generations.”
Do we want this?
“We’re still a little way off from when the Internet can be your co-worker and where you can talk to it and have it bring you all the right information,” he said. “Hopefully, it will happen in our lifetimes.”
I like the idea of a useful and intuitive search engine, but I am not sure I want what this quotation says. I would still like to be able to use my own brain to find the information I need and to help my patrons use theirs. I think the human interactions can also help the searcher see the limitations of their approach and come up with even better ways to get what they want.
They get into better search techniques a little at the bottom of the article, but not much.
Intelligent agentso n-Sense.html
See also
http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Press/Globe-Comm