[WEB4LIB] Googlizers vs. Resistors

[Leo Robert Klein]

On Tue, December 21, 2004 10:34 am, Sloan, Bernie said:
> There's a report in the December issue of Library Journal on a debate
> ("Googlizers vs. Resistors: Librarian's Role in a Googlized World") held
> at the Pennsylvania Library Association's annual conference in October:
>
> http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA485756

This was a good exchange.  I don't think our ever-expanding collection of
online resources will be replaced by Google anytime soon but it's
important to take into account the popularity of its approach.

>From the report (quoting Steven Bell):
"We are concerned about being marginalized, but the 'make it like Google
and they will come' mentality greatly concerns us. We should resist the
desire to give in to Googlization because if we don't put user education
first, we will be marginalizing ourselves."

This is really turning the argument on its head.  For years the fear has
been that the difficulty of using our resources is how we marginalize
ourselves.  If you approach interface design as one of "user education",
you better be sure you've got a bunch of highly motivated users.  Often
this isn't the case.

Favorite quote (Richard Sweeney):
"...At my institution we took some 3600 theses and dissertations and
started adding them so that you could search the metadata through Google.
We've gone from 50 uses a year to 500,000 in the first three years
. It's
location, location, location. Where are the people? On Google. We're going
to where the people are."

LEO

-- -------------
Leo Robert Klein
www.leoklein.com