Librarians versus Internet Search Engines
Today’s New York Times’ column Circuits explores the differences between using a search engine and a librarian to find information and how librarians can position themselves to convince their users that they are better than a search engine.
The first anecdote is a good reminder: sometimes it is indeed quicker to use a print source, like a reliable encyclopedia, than trying to find something on the Internet.
“But unless librarians can convince people that their local library has an edge on Google, communities under pressure to cut costs may have an easy time reducing the library’s budget. After all, [Joe Janes, an associate professor in the Information School at the University of Washington in Seattle,] said, the politicians ‘will think, “That library is nice, but we can cut them back because everything is on the Internet.” ‘”
How many times have we librarians heard that? Many of my colleagues frequently discuss tactics for convincing employers that not everything is on the Internet. (And even if it is, it’s still useful to have someone around with superb searching abilities, organizational skills, and a critical eye to help locate, arrange, evaluate, and track research.) Our use of the Internet seems to have changed from finding things for customers to teaching the customers how to do better searching on their own. One news librarian uses a good measure for when people should stop searching on their own and ask her for assistance. She tells the journalists if they’ve been searching the Internet for ten minutes or more and they haven’t made any headway on their search, they should ask her for assistance.
One of the reasons I’m speaking to a journalism class next week is to give the students some tips for better searching–not just the Web, but archives, databases, and other sources, too–and how to evaluate information.
Addendum: Shimon, Garrett, and many others also wrote about the article.
