[WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era

[Sandra Rotenberg]

What this makes me wonder is why Google doesn't hook up with Ulrich's or
Serials Solutions or one of the companies working with the data on "which
articles can be found full-text in what database" so that one of the
responses on the results list could be the local library which has a
subscription to a particular database -- if they can link into our catalogs
why can't they link into our list of databases?  Most libraries have them.

Sandra Rotenberg        
Librarian 
Solano Community College 
4000 Suisun Valley Road 
Fairfield, CA 94534-3197 
Ph:  (707) 864-7243 
e-mail:  sandra.rotenberg at solano.edu 
  "They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk,
all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man."
--Michael Moore on librarians

  

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org]
On Behalf Of Ross Singer
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 8:52 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Welcome to the Schoogle Era


Whereas, yes, this is exactly the problem --> for us <-- it's not really 
"the problem" for majority of the world.

Most people don't have access to any copy, much less the "appropriate" 
one, so giving them access to "pay-per-view" articles may be entirely 
appropriate.  I am pretty sure the audience for "Google Scholar" is much 
broader than the library user population.

Frankly, I think we need to come up with ways to get this stuff work for 
us and our environments and not freak out about it not fitting into they 
way we wanted it to work.

I guess what I'm saying is that Google/Yahoo/Any other new technology 
that comes up is there and it's ubiquitous and, quite honestly, very 
useful (and good at certain things it does, obviously) and *we're* the 
ones that need to bend over backwards to get it to work for us.  We're 
small potatoes and rather niche and, truthfully, suck at what we do.

I realize that last comment will raise some hackles, and that's a shame, 
but I truly think it's true.  Getting our information generally has an 
extremely steep learning curve, and while it's getting better, we're 
constantly accumulating more and more information that is harder and 
harder to access easily.

Rather than worrying about whether or not Google or Yahoo will show the 
appropriate copy, we should be figuring out ways to make, if not the 
copy available appropriate, other means of accessing the copy for our 
users, whether that be through toolbars, web services, custom interfaces 
or whatever.

I think I went on a few too many tangents there to be considered "coherent".

-Ross.

Thomas Dowling wrote:

>Eric Hellman wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Google Scholar. Wow!
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>
>Yeah but...
>
>This goes a long way toward undoing the last three or four years of 
>work
>on the appropriate copy problem.  Google knows an article exists: good.  
>Google points you to (and only to) some publisher's web site: maybe 
>good, maybe bad.  You may have access there, in which case it's good.  
>You may have access to the same article online through a different 
>aggregator, in which case it's remarkably bad.  There may be a print 
>copy available to you, etc etc etc.  It's a sufficiently chronic problem 
>that lots of us have thrown serious resources into services that answer 
>the "Where is it available FOR ME?" question (namely, local citation 
>resolvers) and Google Scholar does a swift end run around those resources.
>
>  
>



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