You know my point of view. Libraries can’t compete head to head, feature for feature with Google. We do need to decide what differentiates the library experience from the consumer search experience and that’s not hard. See below.
From: BusinessMBA.org
What differentiates the library experience from the consumer search experience?
My top 3?:
1. We have people, trained and professional people who can help imrpove the quality of your questions, provide advice, train you, and much much more. The trick is to highlight our folks onsite and online? Are all your staff photos and talents as discoverable as your books? No? Why not?
2. We have locations where you can see real people and get assistance or access or tech support. We bridge between print and electronic content agnostically. We align services with your need at your stage of life, age, literacy, and more. We actually see your face and you as a real person (not an ad target), not just your linking, or onine social media and searching behaviour. Are your locations on Google Maps? Can you be found easily? No? Why not?
3. Libraries don’t allow their OPAC, websites, and licensed database content, algorithms and search results to be influenced and manipulated by content spammers, commercial interests, search engine or social media optimizations, advertising, and/or special interests like white supremacists, politicians, or lobbyists. We meet the requestors’ real needs as far as possible. Do your folks know your awesomeness? What stories do you tell? Are they recorded on Google’s YouTube?
Google can be the library’s front door. People want what is inside. Google excels at questions that start with who, what, where, when. Libraries excel at honest answers to the quesitons that move our lives and start with why and how.
Libraries are more the antonym of Google and consumer search, not the olden times equivalent.
Stephen
5 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Yes, it is true that Libraries are not Google… Libraries or the Librarians doesn’t come up with unwanted answers when a specific question is asked. They try to understand the query and then answer, whereas google throws out all possible text with matching words… “senselessly”. Google doesn’t have the human touch.
Hi Stephen – Love this. Differentiating the library experience from the popular web is a critical task everyday. While people, skills, expertise, and lack of commercial bias are all essential parts of this positioning, we cannot forget to mention content quality and the ability to evaluate this attribute. Concepts like peer review, criteria for library selection, and being the keeper of humankind’s recorded knowledge for centuries should be part of the argument.
Suresh — you should look into how Google does its — it has at least some human touch that is algorithmically enhanced.
I am not saying that Google isn’t influenced by what Stephen adds in point #3 above. It sure is and always will be.
I have to say, though, that more and more of the how and why questions are being answered, not by algorithms and paid-for-placement results, but by the extended social web in places like Wikipedia. It provides a unique opportunity for the widest possible range of experts–albeit self-proclaimed– to contribute content and moderate others. I find myself getting lost in history and science topics, hyperlinking over and over again to focus in on just what I am interested in. It’s amazing how much I can recall from it, too. So engaging….
I’m not posting this as a troll for folks to debate the merits of Wikipedia; that is no longer a practical discussion, IMO. It’s more in the realm of faith in the collective 🙂
Well apparently I can’t embed HTML very well. Sorry about that.
These Google #s are amazing; thanks for putting them out there. Must share.
I agree with your 3 items, and especially #1. That’s hard to argue, esp in light of the ERIAL study that proved that university students (at least in Illinois) don’t even know what librarians are there for. (http://www.erialproject.org/)
In my presentations I often recommend that websites contain a staff list w/ title, specialties, contact info, even headshots. And half the audience usually gets the deer-in-headlights look. Reminding them that they already work at a public institution doesn’t seem to help. I find this attitude frustrating and frightening. How will they ever claim their place in the world as info experts if they don’t even want anyone to know who they are?!