Convenience vs complexity and Google Scholar

[Wilson,Alane]

I normally just lurk here but this discussion is so engaging I have to
chime in. As Karen mentioned a few dozen posts ago, I have commented on
Google Scholar on the "It's All Good" blog
(http://scanblog.blogspot.com/), as did my co-blogger George Needham.
So, I won't repeat here what we said there. 

I do want to pick up on Amos' comment about simplicity versus complexity
as I think this is a very important element of what is being discussed
here. To be (over) simple myself, stripped of the "brand" names, this
thread is about convenience and complexity. 

I often do presentations on the trends and issues we wrote about in the
OCLC Environmental Scan. One thing I've added to my presentations that
wasn't in the scan is a quote from the speech that John Regazzi gave for
the 2004 Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture at the 46th NFAIS Annual
Conference (February 23, 2004). He said, "In a survey for this lecture,
librarians and scientists were asked to name the top scientific and
medical search resources that they use or are aware of.  The difference
is startling.  Librarians named Science Direct, ISI Web of Science, and
Medline, while scientists named Google, Yahoo, and PubMed (librarians
also named PubMed)."
http://www.nfais.org/publications/mc_lecture_2004.htm 

As you can imagine, many librarians are horrified when they see this and
the lamentations are along the lines of some things said in this space
today. But, as I suggest to audiences, I don't think this is a fight
between quality resources and any-old-thing out on the open web. This
has more to do with convenience than quality, I am convinced. And there
is ample evidence that convenience will trump quality in a lot of
situations. The three sterling databases named by the librarians Mr.
Regazzi surveyed are not convenient to use...they are probably several
layers deep in a library portal, and they no doubt require some kind of
authentication. The three resources named by the scientists are one
click away. 

I don't care how scholarly material gets surfaced on the open
web--Google Scholar will be followed by others--but it has to be there
because no matter how much members of the library community want
information seekers to come to their quality resources, they won't if
getting to those resources is perceived of as inconvenient. Karen
mentioned "satisficing", a term coined by Herbert Simon in the 50s.
Simon contended that in a complex world, individuals cannot possibly
process or even obtain all the information they need to make fully
rational decisions. Rather, they try to make decisions that are good
enough and that represent reasonable or acceptable outcomes. And this is
why we, as a community, have to figure out how to get the content we
want our communities to use, into the spaces they actually use. 

Alane Wilson
Senior Library Market Consultant
Marketing and Library Services
OCLC
800-848-5878 x4386