May 3rd, 2008 Brian Herzog
One of thing I love about my job is the absurd way unlikely resources sometimes need to be cobbled together to answer a question.
A patron called the desk asking for the phone number of a laundromat/cleaners in town. She knew it was just down the street from the library, and I pass it every day, but neither one of us could remember the name.
It was lunch time at the library, so there are no coworkers around to ask. I checked the yellow pages under laundromat, cleaners and dry cleaners, but the only businesses listed were not at the address we’re looking for. I tried a few internet searches for “laundromat chelmsford” and the like, but had no immediate luck.
If there was another person to cover the desk, I would have just walked up the street and called her back with the information. But it was this thought - seeing the sign from the street - that gave me the brilliant idea of trying Google Street View.
I typed the Library’s address into Google Maps, switched over to Street View, and then walked the little yellow man up the block to the laundromat. From this view, I could make out the name of the business (actually, I got lucky and their van was parked in the lot), and from there I could look them up in the white pages.
The patron was not only happy to get the phone number, but amazed at hearing about Street View for the first time. She was so interested that we stayed on the phone for another five minutes while I explained what it was, how it worked, and how she could get to it on her own.
Interesting postscript to this story:
The Chelmsford Library is located on an “island” between two one-way streets. However, this is poorly marked, and I sometimes see non-local cars going the wrong direction. Apparently, whoever was driving the Google photo car is also not from around here. By rotating the Street View down to see the car itself, you can tell by the side mirrors that it’s driving the wrong direction - but best of all, you can follow the car’s hasty U-turn in the library staff parking lot. Happily this did not cause an accident, but I’m surprised Google publishes photographic evidence of its drivers breaking traffic laws.
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Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources | 2 Comments »
March 6th, 2008 Brian Herzog
When I use Google to find information, I often use the “site” limiter to improve the returns.
For instance, when looking for information on the new economic stimulus tax rebate thing, a search for “tax rebate site:irs.gov” gives much more direct information than does just searching for “tax rebate.” Which is great if you know the domain to which you’d like to limit your search, but yesterday, I didn’t.
Someone was looking for information on the James Madison dollar coin, and the U.S. Mint website seemed the most logical place to look for it. However, I didn’t know the Mint’s domain name. So before my usual site-specific search, I first searched for “us mint” to get the domain, and then I was going to run a second search limited to that domain.
But Google is one step ahead of me (I don’t know if this is a new feature or if I just never noticed it before): my search for U.S. Mint returned the Mint’s website as the first result, and the listing included a site search built right in to the search result (see picture).
Neat. And it saves me a step. Searching there for “james madison dollar” gave exactly what the patron was looking for as the first result.
I’m generally skeptical of Google as a company for hording private data, but they do have smart people working there.
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Posted under Library, Resources, Technology | 2 Comments »
August 9th, 2007 Brian Herzog
book, book review, book review search, book reviews, books, google, google custom search, library, public libraries, public library, reader advisory, readers advisory, review, reviews
Tags: book, book review, book review search, book reviews, Books, google, google custom search, Library, public libraries, public library, reader advisory, readers advisory, review, reviews See Also
Posted under Books, Library, Technology | 8 Comments »
June 22nd, 2007 Brian Herzog
I (and I imagine a lot of other people) received a mass-marketing email from an Encyclopedia Britannica sales rep this week. It continues to fan the flames Michael Gorman lit last week.
I was surprised to get this email, considering my library doesn’t subscribe to Britannica online. I generally automatically delete unsolicited sales pitches like this, but since Britannica is embroiled in this Web 2.0 flap, I thought I’d read it - and it certainly turned out to be interesting:
Subject: Don’t contribute to the “hive mind”
To: McIntosh, Robert (rmcintosh@eb.com)
From: McIntosh, Robert (rmcintosh@eb.com)
Date: 6/20/07
Michael Gorman (2005-2006 president of the American Library Association) writes that the Internet’s “solid and reputable sources,” many of them fee-based, are lost in the glut of link-rich free sources that search engines generally return. Until such reputable and reliable information becomes accessible, he writes, “we may well be raising a generation of screen potatoes who, blinded by speed and made lazy by convenience, are ignorant of the knowledge they will never acquire and the rich world of learning that search engines cannot currently deliver to them.” Gorman fears that we are moving away from an encyclopedia model of knowledge, which he describes as “the product of many minds,” to a Wikipedia one, the product of a “hive mind.”
Google has actually attempted to help with this by introducing a new feature called “Subscribed Links”. See this recent announcement:
Hello All:
Google has a new feature called “Subscribed Links” that allows users to customize Google search results by automatically positioning results from trusted sites, such as Britannica, at the top of their search results page.
Because it is very new feature, not many people are aware of it and there are still a relatively small number of sites that are participating at this point. Google provides a directory of sites users can choose to add links from, and Google ranks the sites in this directory based on their popularity. We feel Britannica’s broad topic coverage and reputation uniquely position us to be one of the top ranked sites in this directory.
I encourage all of you to sign up for Britannica’s customized search on Google to help us successfully launch this initiative.
You can follow the link below to sign up with Google now.
http://corporate.britannica.com/google
_subscribed_links/
Of coarse this solution only helps when you do subscribe to a “trusted site”. For those libraries that do, you’ll be amazed by the use of this feature. For those libraries that don’t, you truly need to do better for your patron’s and not contribute to the “hive mind”. Call or write to find out just how affordable it can be, and so that you too can be part of the solution.
Thank You,
Bob McIntosh
Account Executive
Encyclopædia Britannica
rmcintosh@eb.com
800-621-3900 ext 7099
I must say, I do agree with the part that says “…we may well be raising a generation…who, blinded by speed and made lazy by convenience, are ignorant of the knowledge they will never acquire…” This is something that is a threat to libraries in general, and something I work every day to counter - showing patrons how to find information in books and our subscription databases, rather than just the first websites that pop up using Google.
But I do take issue with the rest of this fear-based aggressive sales tactic.
First of all is the “hive mind” comment. The whole message seems to be saying “don’t work together, or think for yourself. Just do what we say. We’re the experts.” I disagree with this on many levels.
Second, while this particular subscribed links program of Google’s is new, the idea of highlighting “preferred” links is not. Up until now, though, those listings with special status were always paid for, or “sponsored,” which often made them much less helpful.
But this new program apparently lets the user decide which trusted websites they want showing up first in their search results. That’s a great idea - unless, of course, the user is “blind,” “lazy,” and “ignorant of knowledge,” and choose a site like Wikipedia instead of Britannica (as, um, Google chose to do on their example screen).
And if Google is letting users choose which websites they want showing up first, how does this address the “ignorant of the knowledge they will never acquire and the rich world of learning that search engines cannot currently deliver” problem? If I limit myself to what I already know and use, then the power of a search engine that looks at everything is kind of stunted.
Also, the way this email reads kind of implies that this is a choice that libraries can make. But it doesn’t seem to be - it seems like a single user needs to go in, set up an account, and then choose their trusted websites. For public computers in a library, we’d either have to never delete the Google cookie, which means eliminating patron privacy, or log into Google every time we restarted the computers. Neither of which I’m willing to do.
So while this is a cool little end-user tool, and one we could explain to patrons and encourage them to use, it is still up to them to choose to use it.
With that in mind, I thirdly take issue with the last paragraph of the email - the one that implies that I am a bad librarian and not doing my job if I don’t force patrons to use the Britannica website. If this is a user-activated tool, it doesn’t matter how “affordable” (free?) it is, because this isn’t a tool I can push on them. I haven’t seen this tool in action, but it seems that Britannica’s concept of it is different that what is presented by Google.
And, really, I hate to be petty, especially about something like a spelling error, but it find it bad form to tout yourself as a reliable and authoritative resource when you mistakenly use “of coarse” instead of “of course.” Now I know I make little mistakes like this, but I also do not fancy myself a comprehensive, infallible authority. I understand that some resources are good for some things, while others are good for other things. Trying to force a one-resource-answers-all solution is, well, rather “coarse.”
britannica, encyclopedia britannica, google, libraries, library, michael gorman, subscribed links, trusted sites, web 2.0
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May 26th, 2007 Brian Herzog
Better than any question I got this week were two blog posts I read. The first is just funny, and the second might also be a tool to help people.
The First comes from librarian.net, about an reference question gone awry due to spell check (slight warning: potty library humor involved).
The Second comes from Google’s Librarian Central, with a story about how their web-based translator helped a patron (for who English was not their first language) have better access to English-language web pages. I usually use Alta Vista’s translator Babel Fish (because it’s been around awhile and for the Douglas Adams connection [note: Towel Day was yesterday]), but it is nice to have a second source for things. Even if it is Google.
alta vista, babel fish, google, google translate, libraries, library, public libraries, public library, reference, reference question, spell check, translation, translator
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Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources | No Comments »
