I don't think this is a very good example of a Google failure. I think the searcher's strategy is more to blame than Google. Martha Yee has a specific question: "is bread bad for coots?" And yet she asks a very broad question: "what do coots eat?"
I first used the search terms "feeding", "coots" and "bread" (no quotes). Not particularly helpful, so I broadened the terms a little to "feeding", "ducks", and "bread" (no quotes). The results make it immediately obvious that feeding bread to ducks and waterfowl is BAD. Same when you use "feeding", "waterfowl", and "bread". The basic drift is that bread is very filling, but nutritionally inferior to their natural diet. Animals can become quite malnourished.
(Note: I know that coots technically aren't ducks...but their diets and foraging habits are identical, and most people would think coots were ducks upon viewing them.)
Bernie Sloan
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. If this
society placed a high value on universal employment (which it clearly
doesn't), the heading Coots-Food would also bring up journal articles and
papers that were wholly about what coots eat. We could even imagine a
future in which correct RDF coding might allow a computer to translate the
heading for a user who couldn't understand LCSH-ese into "food that coots
eat."
Just saying...
Martha
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Martha M. Yee
Cataloging Supervisor
UCLA Film & Television Archive
1015 N. Cahuenga Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90038-2616
323-462-4921 x27
323-469-9055 (fax)
myee_at_ucla.edu (Email at work)
Campus mail:
302 E. Melnitz
132306
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"You have a dollar. I have a dollar. We swap. Now you have my dollar and I
have your dollar. We are not better off. You have an idea. I have an idea.
We swap. Now you have two ideas and I have two ideas. Both are richer. When
you gave, you have. What I got, you did not lose. That’s cooperation"—Jimmy
Durante quoted in Schnozzola, by Gene Fowler, 1951, p. 207-208.
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Received on Tue Jan 29 2008 - 14:47:46 EST