Librarians and Google
I’m a librarian and I love my Google. But I cringe when I read comparisons between Librarians and google. (Notice the inadvertent capitalisation. No, I’m not going to correct it!) I’m proud of the way we deal with the reference interview. I will never forget one of my first experiences in a public library when a little old lady asked for “light reading.” Eager to please, I listed romance novels, light Australiana, some mysteries, but each example I laid before her was waved away as too heavy. Finally she explained that the book had to be light so she could hold it up to read in bed!! I suppose you can point out an example of google being able to answer that question and it is frivolous in any serious discussion of the role of a Librarian (there’s that capital again!) So I had to share this post from Stephen B at the ARCLog. “ … If our library users prefer Google when they search for information, then it follows they will like our library resources better if they too are just like Google. We see this all the time in the world of consumer products. If one company makes a product, an SUV, frozen food, whatever, its competitors will imitate that product in hopes of attracting more customers and making more sales. Put another way, we want to give our user communities a Google experience in hopes of luring them back to the library. When librarians decide that imitating Google is the way to get students and faculty to use the library’s databases, web site, and other electronic resources, they are telling a lie.
The reason it’s a lie is because the user has only been given a Google façade. What lies behind the façade is nothing like Google.”
Stephen concludes with “We can give them an experience they’ll want to tell others about.” You can read the whole post …I think there’s far more depth than he covers, but it’s a topic worth considering.And I want to thank Stephen Downes who mentioned this article and commented that
“… something about it bothered me. And it’s this. The author tells us that librarians are misleading us when they say libraries can be like Google. “We will tell people it may take them longer than 60 seconds to find valuable information. We will tell them our library databases are not the same as Google…” And I want to know, why not? Why does it take so long to find stuff? Why isn’t the stuff accessible through this collection? Why is it that what the library offers me is mostly a set of excuses and limitations, instead of what I really want, fast and easy and relevant access? This is a key question for librarians: what is the value-add that is being brought to the table? (And don’t say ‘metadata’ - it’s just not on the table).”
I respect his opinion and thank him for the challenge.
Perhaps I should point him to Peta’s earlier post…!
Feed
