[Web4lib] RE: Another Google question

[Richard Wiggins]

I used to be a prescriptivist about language. My mother, and my middle 
school teacher Mrs. McCool, made me that way. I used to think there was 
"the" right way to say things.
 Although I haven't entirely gotten over that tendency, I've come to realize 
that language is how people choose to speak and write. The rules descibe the 
behavior; they don't prescribe the behavior.
 And so it is with search. People type in a few (1 to 2 in most cases) words 
and expect the search engine to do its magic. And -- surprise! -- most of 
the time Google delivers.
 Google was the first search engine to really match its hit list with its 
users expectations. Let the engine behave according to the way its customers 
do, instead of tilting at windmills trying to train the customer to search 
"correctly."
 Who are we to gainsay that? Larry and Sergey built Google to handle 
millions of searches across billions of URLs with simplicity. They didn't 
have OPACs or set theory in mind; they had human behavior in mind. 
 Those of us of a certain age remember the original Star Trek. Spock would 
say "Computer." It would respond "working." He'd ask a very specific 
question. It (she) would intone a very specific response. They didn't debate 
the size of the hit list.
 We all know that's over-idealizing what a search engine can deliver with 
quality. But millions expect that kind of interaction. 
 Maybe we could convince Google to offer "Basic / Advanced / OPAC-Like"? :-)
 /rich
 PS -- it still bugs me when people get "I" vs "me" wrong... :-) 

 On 7/15/05, Drew, Bill <drewwe at morrisville.edu> wrote: 
> 
> Maybe Google has it right and we have it wrong by thinking how they
> "should" search. Our catalogs are the ones with the intellectual
> limitations. Our OPACs tend to make the wrong assumptions about how
> people search.
> 
> Bill Drew
> drewwe at morrisville.edu
> 
> > One of the things that I think we can conclude about Google,
> > and that it
> > should be possible to study, is that people tend to approach search
> > engines with a version of the library world's "known item"
> > search. You
> > are looking for someone or some page that you know exists or
> > are pretty
> > sure should exist. (After all, why go searching for something
> > that might
> > not be there?) You have an "identifier" in mind that you will use for
> > this search. What Google has done brilliantly is respond to the way
> > people search, not how we think they *should* search (which
> > is more the
> > philosophy behind library catalogs). But that also means that Google
> > embodies the intellectual limitations of the average person's search
> > techniques.
> >
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