Reader Speaks Out on Search and Libraries–AltSearchEngines
Hope Leman of Scangrants.com has a guest posting on AltSearchEngines.com called “A Reader Speaks Out on Search and Libraries”:
“As someone who works in a medical library and as someone fascinated by search engines and who wishes well to worthwhile innovation in search, I have a few suggestions for how search engines and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs generally can spread the word about their tools to librarians. Doing so is good business—librarians tend to spend hours searching. They deal with the public and key players in corporate settings and they read blogs by other librarians and pass along news of what they find on such blogs via email or list servers.”
“This is not an audience that you should ignore.”
“For instance, I have had some mutually productive interactions with various search engine developers I have read about here. They seem to have benefited from my (free!) input and it makes sense to have expert eyes look at your stuff and critique it. I am no expert, but many librarians are very sophisticated, astute analysts of search technologies. After all, many of the leading lights in the search world (e.g., Gary Price, Tara Calishain, Greg Notess, and Mary Ellen Bates) are either former librarians or very much listened to by librarians who attend gatherings such as Internet Librarian and Computers in Libraries. Consider attending those conferences, either as individuals just to get a feel for them or as a sponsor of a booth. You would stand out given that we librarians are quite used to seeing the old standbys such as EBSCO, H.W. Wilson and Gale. Web 2.0 is surprisingly underrepresented at tech-oriented gatherings in the vendor arena.”
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