> I got into this rather late, but I would like to point out that the
> purpose of Google vs. the purpose of libraries is completely
> different and this is reflected in their tools. Google is a
> business and as such, aims at "Customer satisfaction." Therefore,
> if the customer is satisfied, that is the end of their responsibility.
>
> I would contend that librarians practice a profession, such as
> doctors or lawyers. A doctor worries less about satisfying the
> customer, i.e. telling patients what they want to hear, and tells
> them what they need to hear. This may make the patient/customer
> very angry. Librarians follow a code of ethics, which does not even
> exist for businesses such as Google. The ALA code is at: http://
> www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/codeofethics/codeethics.htm
Could you expand on the parallel between librarianship and say, being
a medical doctor? For example, the similarities in the expectations
of users that you're seeing or in the sanctions that are applied to
librarians when they fail to find the right resource for a user's
needs? I'm not sure library users see librarians in quite the same
way as they see their lawyer or doctor.
The google code of conduct is at: http://investor.google.com/
conduct.html and makes interesting reading...
It contains a section on serving their users well, taking a stand on
issues that affect their users, respecting each other at work and not
letting personal issues become a conflict of interest; all in all it
seems to me to be very similar.
> ***Please note*** that I am not saying anything bad about Google
> and other search engines--I'm just pointing out that they are quite
> different from libraries, which deal with information in completely
> different ways, and include reliability and completeness of
> results, a lack of bias, no profiting, etc. We should not expect
> anything else from profit-making businesses, since this is how they
> operate. It would be unfair to expect a code of ethics from them.
and yet google have one - for all the world to see and discuss and
challenge them on.
> Therefore, people who look in Google for materials about
> "Dostoyevsky" may be really happy until they realize what they are
> missing because of different spellings of the name, some of them
> quite strange. I believe that one of the primary tasks of
> librarians today should be to let people know what they are missing.
Not knowing much about Dostoyevsky I figured I'd try http://
www.google.co.uk/search?q=Dostoyevsky and see what I got. The very
first hit is the wikipedia article which contains the common
transliterations of his name as well as the russian. More
interestingly many of the first page results were for sites using the
spelling 'Dostoevsky' as their prominent form. But as I'm not an
expert on any russian authors I can't say what I'm missing out on.
> The term "relevance" is an advertising device, such as McDonald's
> "We do it all for you." The problem is, while I believe very few
> people really believed that McDonald's really does do it all for
> everybody else except themselves, I fear that users of Google
> believe literally that the items they are looking at really are the
> "relevant" ones. But I don't know. Perhaps I'm wrong.
The term "relevance" simply means "it meets my needs". Something that
the world at large believe Google does very well. Certainly the
search discussed above looks to me like it would meet the needs of
all but the most ardent researcher - and I would expect they would be
using far more distinct terms than 'Dostoyevsky'.
That is to say, relevance is about matching the result to the context
of the user. What Google excels at it is guessing that context from
what you've typed, how much you've typed, how specific it is and
much, much more.
Surely a next-generation catalogue has to do a better job of that?
>
> James Weinheimer
Rob Styles
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Received on Thu Jan 03 2008 - 13:35:24 EST