[WEB4LIB] RE: Seeing ourselves as others see us

[Bernhard Eversberg]

On 7 Jan 05, at 13:45, K.G. Schneider wrote:

> What we needed was some lively,
> intelligent insights into the nexus of libraries and Google, ...

Not only do we need such insight, it might also change the way we work.
For the "normal" reader, there has long been an abundance of sources of potential 
usefulness, though many were not quite aware of that fact or didn't know how to 
find and tap those sources. The general perception then was one of scarcity.
Now, however, everyone perceives an overabundance, and there are many more 
sources available and a lot more stuff is accessible than any user can cope with 
in reasonable time, AND the "reasonable time" anyone is able or prepared to 
expend on information search or learning has shortened. Or, if you will, 
impatience has increased a great deal.

What we need to make clear and get across is, I think, the importance of 
judgement. Awareness of quality or the lack of it has become more important than 
ever before, now that we have (and want) less and less "filtering" by peers, 
publishers, or privilege providers. Readers need to be aware that there are 
sources out there of widely varying quality and reliability. If it is true that 
scarcely more than the first screenful of Google results obtained after the first 
try is typically looked at, then what does that tell us? Hasn't the potential 
demand for guidance increased rather than decreased?
While it may be true that Google's results satisfy some people all of the time or 
even all people some of the time, librarians (or who else?) have to make people 
aware that there cannot be one way of searching and one tool that they all can 
trust or that would be good enough for all of them all of the time. 
And some people may still want stuff that is more than good enough but they need 
to be made aware that it exists and how to find it. But if it has been digitized, 
it may even be findable via Google - and sometimes more easily than via 
catalogs...



Bernhard Eversberg
Universitaetsbibliothek, Postf. 3329, 
D-38023 Braunschweig, Germany
Tel.  +49 531 391-5026 , -5011 , FAX  -5836
e-mail  B.Eversberg at tu-bs.de