A few weeks ago, Peter Van Dijck pointed to a Library Journal article about the Google-ization of libraries. For those interested in information retrieval and libraries, this is an interesting article. I'm especially interested right now because I'm playing a very active role in "Google-izing" a digital library.
For me, the issue comes down to ease-of-access. We keep hearing from our users that people prefer Google to our hand-picked, high-quality resources. Google is a one-click operation (seeing as it's built into browser toolbars and such), and fast to boot. Our resources currently live three or four clicks off of the homepage, and behind authentication schemes (they're subscription databases). And, each one of our databases has a very different interface. Some are easy and clear; others are more complicated. But perhaps the most difficult part is the user needs to know which one of the databases to try. With some exceptions, users could find relevant information in more than one of the databases, and because of the general nature of the resources, it can be hard to give good guidance to the users upfront. So, the user is left to click into each one with the hopes of finding info. No wonder people go off to Google!
So, we're going to put a federated search engine in place. The idea is that users would be able to use a Google-like interface, but get our high-quality resources back as results. I'm not viewing this solution as a comprehensive search solution. Rather, after returning a few results (say, 5 or 10), I'm going to dump the user back into the native database interface. In other words, those users who would like to use the more powerful tools provided in each system can do so. The simple results we return should also point the user in the right direction. They wouldn't need to try each and every database, only the ones that look like they might have quality results.
This is all well and good, but I think there is a bigger issue at stake in the information literacy realm. It seems like some of the librarians in article are focused on teaching patrons how to use the library information systems (OPACs, databases, whatever). The "click here, click there" type of training is fine and good (although I'd rather see interfaces that are so intuitive they don't require training). But, the focus in information literacy really needs to be on evaluating information. I don't care if the results come from Google or a subscription database, the patron needs to know how to evaluate the information and decide if it is trustworthy, useful, and relevant. This is much harder than "click here, click there", but ultimately much more useful.
Posted by Karl
June 25, 2005 04:41 PM