[Web4lib] Re: Google Search Appliance and OPACs

[Tim Spalding]

>I can remember back in the days of Gopher ... when a few libraries put
their catalogs up on Gopher. It was a complete disaster. If you searched for
just about anything (using Veronica, I believe) you would get swamped with
individual catalog records from libraries that usually were some distance
from you. What good was that?

Veronica "flooded" results because Veronica didn't have a good concept of
relevancy. Google does.

Type, "Omnivore's Dilemma" into Google. You get almost 1,000,000 results.
Are you flooded? No. Because the good ones come up on top.

Type "Omnivore's Dilemma, Portland Public Library" into Google and you get
nothing useful. If Google knew of a page that had both the book AND my
public library, they would come up on top, I'm sure of it. They don't
because my library isn't on the web. Few libraries are.


That's a problem. It's a basic brokenness and it's a brokenness that
libraries have not only suffered but rationalized. To find the "flooding"
idea propagated by one of the most cogent and influential library
technologists just staggers me.

Best,
Tim