[WEB4LIB] Amazon vs. Google as our corporate role model (was: In defense of

[Steve Oberg]

>In short, the commerce world has figured out that the intelligence needs
>to be build into the back end (e.g. the search engine), not into the
>front end (e.g. instruction).  If we don't do that, we'll continue to
>drive users to the interfaces and services that do.
>  
>

I find something very ironic about this statement ("...intelligence 
needs to be build [sic] into the back end...") because this flies 
completely in the face of a decade-long (or longer) trend to cut back on 
staffing levels on the "back end," particularly in technical services.  
We have administrators or directors who are reassigning their staff to 
public services (e.g. reference) to help users find what they need.  
Users, they say, want service.  Another aspect of this, relating to 
library OPACs, is the heavy emphasis on a "pretty" front end that can do 
lots of neat user-oriented things.  This, at the same time that the back 
end stuff was being cut and that resulted in an increasingly shoddy catalog.

I realize that what is being proposed here has more to do, perhaps, with 
IT staffing, but one of the foundational goals of technical services in 
libraries is to build a level of intelligence or ease for the user to 
make it easier for him/her to find what he/she wants.  This is why 
technical services is very much a public service and should be 
considered as such.  Thinking of one part of traditional technical 
services, cataloging, te whole point of an authority structure was to 
help users find related items.  The whole point of providing linking 
entries in serials records was to help users navigate to related things. 
Just a few examples.

I am by no means a Luddite in spirit.  I also realize that praising 
technical services or raising this kind of traditional -- library -- 
perspective is definitely frowned upon or dismissed by many.  It's not 
fashionable.  I do not think that things were/are good in technical 
services and didn't/don't need to change.  I just find it ironic that we 
are coming to a conclusion about how good these commercial services are 
(and I agree with that) when we are basically not investing in back end 
operations to build better or more  intelligent systems for our users.  
This is what they are doing.  Why aren't we?  Maybe we are, but we 
aren't doing enough.

Steve

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Steve Oberg
Family Man Librarian
www.familymanlibrarian.com