First, let me apologize for my compressed and somewhat hostile tone. I
appreciate your willingness to play ball even so. Ultimately, even if
I disagreed with you on every point--which is not at all so--I would
be grateful for the opportunity to discuss it thoughtfully with you.
> I never said people are stupid. It's just that Google is very good at hiding things and making people "happy." Google, just like library catalogs or anything else, has its strengths and weaknesses. My tired old example that I use all the time to my students is: what should you search in Google if you want items on world war 1? It's a no brainer, right? "WWI" and you get zillions of things that you could never read if you spent your entire life. But then, I ask if it's a good search, and then I point out that by definition, they are *not* getting some of the most important types of materials. And what are these? Primary sources--in fact, anything written before world war 2, because it wasn't called world war 1 until world war 2 happened. You would have to search for "european war' (but how many of those have there been?). Not a single one of my users has ever realized this before I point this out but they begin to realize it's a little more complicated than they thought and!
they are all a little less enamored of the Google result.
But again, Jim, this is false. You're not Googling these things and
looking at the results. In fact, primary-source documents annotated
with the term "World War I" are the rule online, not the exception.
It's library subjects—which used "World War, 1914-1918"—that have the
problem, not the web.
No primary sorces? Well, from the first ten links Link #5 is the
"World War I Document Archive" from Brigham Young University, a
massive collection of primary sources, helpfully subdivided into
Conventions and Treaties, Official papers, Diaries, Image Archive,
etc. Link #9 is the website "Eyewitness to history," which excepts a
few dozen personal accounts of the war—a good introduction to some
useful or interesting resources. And link #10 is the well-known
Internet Modern History Sourcebook, an extensive link list of WWI
resources—from the Zimmerman Telegram, telegrams to and from various
European capitals, multiple versions of the Treaty of Versailles, as
well as personal accounts by the Red Barron and Rosa Luxemburg, and
the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Of the other links,
very many contain bibliographies and link lists to primary sources.
Turning back to libraries, I did a "Subject Search" on the Library of
Congress for WWI and the first two hits are:
31 Eskadra Rozpoznawcza--World War II.
Aerial gunnery--History--World War, 1939-1945.
Only at three do I get a clue of what's going on:
Aeronautics, Military--Germany--History--World War, 1914-1918.
So, World War I isn't a valid subject time--I must use "World War,
1914-1918." But in this case, the "10,000 results" (a curiously round
number!) are mostly of this form—"World War, 1914-198" stuck at the
end of some other subect, like "Australia--Army--Recruiting,
enlistment, etc." or "Dutch East Indies. Militaire
Luchtvaart--History--."
This list is, of course, far too much, even if it were possibe to
remove World War II items. I couldn't figure out how to do a
"left-anchored" search, so I would get only things that *start* with
"World War, 1914-1918." If the system weren't so obviously borked, I'd
be tempted to conclude that controlled vocabulary, like artificial
intelligence in search, is an idea too far ahead of current
technology.
To return to Sassoon and Owen, it's also worth remarking that many of
their books lack WWI-related subject headings in the Library of
Congress and other libraries. They're often just poets, and the
granularity consensus of library cataloging makes it hard for
individual poems on a topic to surface. The web does a better job of
contextualizing their work, of splitting it into appropriate units,
and of making it findable by its predominant subject.
> Google is the forest without a map. A library catalog at least has a map but it is terribly difficult to use. Both have weaknesses and strengths but in either case, people should be aware of the opportunities and pitfalls in both.
> In any case, the goal of librarianship is to make people as independent as possible and to be able to use these tools themselves. And certainly librarianship is among the most anti-censorship groups I have ever met.
Before the web, the people who "couldn't be bothered" never thought
about the process by which information was "made." It was in a book,
and that was good enough. Teaching ancient history some years ago, I
found this a continual battle--forcing students to think critically
about how documents "work."
Rather than a decline, I see an ascent. The web (Google, etc.) has
taken the veil off the thing. The whole connected world is undergoing
an intensive--enjoyable!--graduate seminar in Quellenforschung--with
every blog post, Wikipedia entry, tweet and YouTube video an object of
study. All of a sudden the basics of source criticism--that every
document came from somewhere, has some opinion, has an intended
audience, and has no inherent claim on your belief--is before the eyes
of all. Searching, and being rewarded for good searches used to be a
fringe activity; it's now central to all our lives.
> I have met several respected scholars who consider they don't need help to find information and that the Google algorithm will do it all for them. I have met several from the "Google generation" who are especially hostile to the idea that Google is not enough.
A twelve-year old knows Google isn't enough--it's pretty lousy at
finding YouTube videos, for example! Mutatis mutandis this applies
across the information spectrum. People learn what's good and what's
not. And Google has opened up options, not closed them.
If searchers today are unaware of many relevant printed source, they
were largely unaware before. Many are now looking back on the "old
days" as an age of close, personal contact with good sources. That's
nonsense. Fifteen years ago, people may not have been copying from the
internet, but they were cribbing out of encyclopedias and copying
essays kept on file at their fraternities. (I personally benched half
the U. Mich hockey team for that offense!) We have better tools now,
but ignorance and laziness are renewable resources.
Best,
Tim
Received on Mon Feb 23 2009 - 10:45:23 EST