[WEB4LIB] Re: Google Answers questions

[Richard Wiggins]

Ouch -- your reaction surprises me a bit... Perhaps you are reading more
into my posting than is there.

For years now we have heard how the Web brings disintermediation -- people
won't need human assistance for their information needs.

Then we've heard that people will pay for quality information via the Web --
but with a few notable exceptions, that turns out not to be true. 

Predating the Web, we've always had some small consulting firms that do
by-the-sip paid searches for corporate and legal customers.  Those folks
co-exist with library reference services.  In fact many of them exploit
reference resources at research libraries.

What Google is trying to create, I think, is Ebay for quality searching. 
Not everyone is good at searching.  Some people are.  Matching people with
good answers may be worth money to people.

You can dismiss the news by trivializing my one example search, but that
misses the point.  (I did not fall off the search turnip truck, by the way;
I was testing the service.)  You might want to take a look at other recent
searches done on the service, and what people were willing to pay:

https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=currentquestions

Any enterprise ignores what the Web enables at their peril.  Ask travel
agents.

/rich


On Tue, 21 May 2002, "William M. Wines" wrote

> 
> On Tue, 21 May 2002, Richard Wiggins wrote:
> 
> > In any event, I dunno folks, but I think Google is onto something.
> 
> Well, maybe, but in terms of cost to the end-user, in nearly all cases, a
> consultation with a reference librarian is free; and I'm not sure how many
> people really care if they get footnotes and citations as long as they get
> an answer to their question along with a single credible and reliable (and
> cited) source.  
> 
> What Google is on to (and I'm not dissing them for this by any means) is
> another slick way to extract money from people who have money to spend.  I
> don't think it's all that important for public libraries to spend a lot of
> time worrying about how they can compete with private enterprise.  OTOH, I
> think it is very important to spend more time thinking about how we can
> reach out to people who don't have $20 to spend finding out about
> helipcopter sorties over the Grand Canyon.  
> 
> -----------------------------
> Bill Wines
> Assistant Director
> Walled Lake City Library
> 1499 E. West Maple Rd.
> Walled Lake, MI 48390
> (248) 624-3772
> http://walled-lake.lib.mi.us
> -----------------------------

Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com