Ten years ago today Google became a registered corporation with the State of California, after some initial development at Stanford. Today's Chronicle has an interesting package of articles to mark the occasion.
The lead article does not quote any librarians, but does quote Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto: "Google has had a huge impact on the world. What it's done is put information at your fingertips and made us less reliant on experts." [Emphasis mine]
At the UCSF Library a few months ago, Pat Wagner offered an excellent marketing workshop for librarians. A critical point: When professions are threatened by major change--i.e., it will always be easier to search Google than to ask a librarian for help--it is common for the professionals (librarians in this case) to fall back upon the glory days and promote skills that now seem to be obsolete. The first reaction to a threat is nostalgia.
The Medical Library Association offers amazing resources for expert searchers, but I've always been ambivalent about this focus. If colleagues want to help others learn how to search numerous biomedical databases, that is great. But if we promote ourselves too heavily as expert searchers to our patrons, then we've fallen into the nostalgia trap. People know that Google can easily lead to information overload, but the thrill of being in control of the information search is potent.
So, what's a librarian to do? There are many possibilities. Offer classes on how to search Google better, as we do at UCSF. Or provide tips on information management and smart searching (Google, PubMed and beyond), as we also do at UCSF. In general, we should think of ourselves as information consultants and partners...not "experts." That's so 1997.
Recent Comments