If you put the words "Coots food" into Google, then most of the results
that you get on the first page do seem to be about what coots eat.
Giles Martin
Assistant Editor, Dewey Decimal Classification
OCLC
marting_at_oclc.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Edward Corrado
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:42 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Another Google adventure
----- "Martha Yee" <myee_at_UCLA.EDU> wrote:
> I know this is asking for trouble, but I can't resist sharing my
> latest
> Google adventure with you all. My husband and I were feeding stale
> bread to
> some coots on Echo Park Lake (in a neighborhood park near our house),
> when I
> was suddenly conscience-stricken at the realization that I didn't
> actually
> know if stale bread was good for coots. When I got home, I typed in
> to
> Google's famous search box "what do coots eat?" The reply that came
> back
> was a web site entitled "What do eagles eat?" In the list of eagle
> edibles
> was coots.
>
> In LCSH, the heading Coots--Food would give you perfect recall and
> precision
> for monographs wholly about what coots eat, if there were any.
However, if you search for "what do coots eat?", this wouldn't come up
either with LCSH. You would need to know the pseudo-thesaurus that is
LCSH to know this. Many librarians might know this, but most of the
people that I see at the reference desk wouldn't. I guess the point is,
that neither approach is perfect.
Edward
Received on Tue Jan 29 2008 - 11:43:33 EST