Sex & the Search Engine

[cadieux at librarybook.com]

Jan. 23, 1998

This morning I attempted a standard AltaVista search on "superbowl."
I queried for hits from 21/Dec/97 and later.

For "superbowl" none of the top 5 sites had anything significant to do with
this year's superbowl.  Two of the top five hits were sites offering
subscriptions to nude picture archives.

Just for the heck of it, I also did a search on "windows 98."  My top hit
was a sex site promoting "Pregnant Hot Virgins."

The upshot: Search engine results are becoming LESS valuable, and
librarians who are finding, categorizing, and promoting useful, relevant
sites are becoming MORE valuable.  Generally speaking, librarians are
trusted by the public, and here is an opportunity to build on this trust.

Joseph Cadieux
Director
Kent Memorial Library
Suffield, Connecticut 06078
cadieux at suffield-library.org