ResourceBlog Article: Librarians Are Not Search Engines

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Monday, 24th May 2004

Librarians Are Not Search Engines

Professional Reading Shelf
Librarians
Source: American Libraries
Librarians Are Not Search Engines
In his latest column (a must read), Dr. Joseph Janes writes, "Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the obvious comparisons between that [web search engines] and what a librarian does. To be sure, both are ways to get answers to questions; so in a sense both librarians and search engines are 'answerers.' It does seem an odd parallel, though; we never got ourselves compared (much less compared ourselves) to databases, catalogs, reference books, or the like. I think I know where this notion comes from: Some librarians, not without justification, might see search engines as competition. It's not at all difficult to look at the rise of free and easy Internet searching and the simultaneous and sometimes precipitous drop in reference statistics and put two and two together. And that may well be a big part of what's going on. So why not portray ourselves as the preferred alternative, in the same ballpark? Because it's dangerous, that's why. Sure, you can get an answer out of Vivisimo or Teoma, and you can also get an answer out of one of your local public library's telephone reference service. The answer from Viv�simo might even be faster. (It might even be right.) But it'll also be mindless. And unconcerned with quality, evaluation, instruction, or meeting your specific needs. There's also a good chance it'd be a good answer to a question you weren't really asking." I would add to Dr. Janes' comments that we also see the idea of the open web as the world's largest library mentioned in many articles. I can understand where this comes from (large amounts of info in one "virtual" location), but it's a real stretch. A library is a controlled, well-maintained, selective and organized collection of resources. We all know that the open web is not close to this idea. This doesn't mean that some of the massive amounts of material found via web engines is not valuable -- it ABSOLUTELY IS -- but this alone doesn't make a general web engine a library. That said, I think the general web engines (Yahoo, Google, Ask, etc.) could work more with the library community to solicit our thoughts on how to make their products more valuable tools for all users (including many librarians).

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