August 31st, 2010 Brian Herzog
Sometimes when I am working on a post, I wonder if another library blogger has already covered it - an am afraid I’ll look kind of dumb rehashing something.
So I thought, wouldn’t it be great to set up a Google custom search engine to search all library-related blogs? Before I did, I checked if anyone already created one, and it turned out Library Zen had - four years ago (I’m even further behind than I thought).
LISZEN Search searches over 500 library blogs, and has an accompanying wiki to keep track. If you write about the library world, add yourself.
Something related that would also be nice is a custom search of just library websites - so it would be easy to quickly see what other library’s policies are regarding ebooks, or circulating laptops, or how much they charge for printing, etc. But considering the breadth of libraries and the complexity of maintaining it, just using regular Google might be more realistic.
Tags: blog, blogs, co-op, cse, custom search engine, google, librarian, librarians, libraries, Library, liszen, public, search, Websites See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 7 Comments »
August 21st, 2010 Brian Herzog
This question might get me into a little trouble* but it’s a good example of the importance of librarians, so here goes:
The phone rang, and the person on the other end said she was a librarian fresh out of library school, working at elementary school in Colorado, and having trouble locating some poems her teachers wanted for class. She knew the titles and authors, but couldn’t find the actual text in her library or online. She called me because she likes my website and hoped I could help.
My first suggestion was Granger’s Index to poetry - it wasn’t in her collection but was in her local public library. But because online resources are more useful for these long-distance questions, and it was a very quiet afternoon at work, after we hung up I thought I’d try searching for the text myself, too.
The four poems she was looking for were Eating the World, Last Kiss and Statue by Ralph Fletcher, and Spaghetti by Cynthia Rylant. I started by searching for title/author combinations, grouped together with quotes (ie, “ralph fletcher” “eating the world”). I was somewhat surprised that, even after going through the few pages of results, the texts weren’t there.
Then I thought maybe they were scanned as part of the Google Books project, so I clicked the link on each page to switch to searching Google Books (see image above). And if I was surprised at not finding the texts in a regular web search, I was doubly surprised to find they were the first or second result when searching Google Books.
So far, including the phone call, this all took me literally less than ten minutes.
I emailed the four story links to the librarian, and she replied that they were exactly what she needed. So that’s nice.
But I do think this is also a nice example of why librarians remain relevant in the internet age - an inexperienced searcher may not have known to enclose the author names and titles in quotation marks, or may not have known to try the more specialized Google Books search when the first attempt produced no results (keeping in mind that there are also lots of non-Google tools available, too), or may not have recognized the answer even though it was in a form other than what they were expecting (these poems turned out to be short stories).
This is especially true in light of the recent Northwestern University study that shows “digital natives” aren’t actually all that web-savvy. The study’s results seemed to imply that kids expect the internet to present them with the answer to their question, rather than expect to be engaged in the information search and critically evaluate resources themselves.
My favorite quote:
During the study, one of the researchers asked a study participant, “What is this website?” The student answered, “Oh, I don’t know. The first thing that came up.”
If it were someone from the iGeneration searching for these stories, it seems likely they would have stopped after the first search, empty-handed. So, yes, there certainly is, and will be, a need for librarians and experienced information searchers.
*Since I work in a public library, my tax-funded salary is intended to be spent on helping local patrons. It’s hard for me to say “no” when people ask for help, but I do not (and ethically can not) make a habit of helping other librarians with their questions on work time - unless, of course, I’m contacted to check a resource my library owns. There are forums that can help with questions like this, such as
Unshelved Answers, the
PUBLIB mailing list, the
Internet Public Library question form,
Ask Metafilter, and
many others of varying degree of credibility. Something I love about librarianship is the collaborative and cooperative nature of the profession, but I guess there has to be limits, too.
Tags: google, google books, libraries, Library, poem, poems, public, Reference Question, search, searching, stories, story See Also
Posted under Library, Reference Question | 2 Comments »
June 24th, 2010 Brian Herzog
I passed this church sign while walking around Ottawa:
I’m used to hearing the “Google is not as good as libraries” rhetoric, so it was funny to see another profession facing the same struggle. By the way, Bibles in my library are shelved at 220.5/Bibl - maybe our slogan should be, “find a library, find your way.”
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Posted under Random | 6 Comments »
June 1st, 2010 Brian Herzog
I read last week that Google is now offering an encrypted search option, and was surprised the story didn’t get more coverage.
Anyone wanting to use it needs to go to https://www.google.com (note the https:), and it appears it only applies to web searching - not images or the other searches. Read more at:
This is good for those library patrons who want extra privacy while searching the internet. However, online privacy increasingly seems to be an illusion (remember, Google will still see and track these searches - this just cuts down on other people monitoring the searches).
via
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Posted under Library, Technology | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2010 Brian Herzog
My library’s ever-shrinking book budget has made me be more discerning when it comes to selection. However, one area that is always difficult for me is biographies.
It seems like every troubled athlete, aging celebrity, recovering musician, reality television personality, unfaithful politician (and their wives), have all signed book deals. I don’t pay much attention to pop culture personalities, so it’s hard for me to tell if the person is someone significant.
So I was joking with a coworker about a new selection criteria for all of these celebrity memoirs. Since the importance of many of these people is based on social zeitgeist, I thought I could use Google to help me decide. I figure that if a person is important, a Google search for that person’s name should return at least one million webpages. If they’re above that (arbitrary) threshold, I’ll buy their biography - if not, then I’ll check again when the paperback comes out.
Granted, not all my ideas are practical, but here’s how some current biographies fare with this “hive mind” selection criteria:
- The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remnick (51,900,000 for “Barack Obama”)
- Oprah: A Biography, by Kitty Kelley (21,900,000 for “Oprah”)
- Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, by Hampton Sides (12,300,000 for “Martin Luther King”)
- Bowie: A Biography, by Marc Spitz (10,400,000 for “David Bowie”)
- Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea Handler (3,450,000 for “Chelsea Handler”)
- The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee, by Sarah Silverman (2,810,000 for “Sarah Silverman”)
- Staying True, by Jenny Sanford (2,280,000 for “Jenny Sanford”)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned, by Michael J. Fox (1,430,000 for “Michael J. Fox”)
- Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage, by Raquel Welch (1,250,000 for “Raquel Welch”)
- This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection, by Carol Burnett (868,000 for “Carol Burnett”)
- A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago’s Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond by Craig Robinson (504,000 for “Craig Robinson”)
- When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man by Jerry Weintraub and Rich Cohen, (373,000 for “Jerry Weintraub”)
- I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, by Nujood Ali (268,000 for “Nujood Ali”)
- The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century, by Alan Brinkley (193,000 for “Henry Luce”)
- Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted, by Todd Bridges and Sarah Tomlinson (141,000 for “Todd Bridges”)
- Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds, by Robin Olds, Christina Olds, and Ed Rasimus (122,000 for “Robin Olds”)
Obviously, not flawless, but this Google criteria might help tell me who I should pay attention to. And in addition to traditional reviews and ratings, another one of my tactics is to wait until requests for a book reach a certain number before ordering it, but that method only addresses demand after the fact, and leaves out the patrons who didn’t think to request it.
Selection is a fine art, but when it comes to biographies, most my crayons are dull.
Tags: biographies, biography, Books, collection development, google, libraries, Library, memoir, memoirs, popular, popularity, public, selection, zeitgeist See Also
Posted under Books, Library | 4 Comments »
