Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
> It's not that google isn't always easiest that's controversial.
>
> It's that, sadly, the library catalog is VERY SELDOM easiest, and in
> your particular example, wasn't. I'm sure you can find some other
> example where a library catalog really will be easiest (not just
> compared to google, but compared to whatever is available on the free
> web), but the examples are going to be few and far between, becuase it
> very very seldom is.
>
> This is a sad thing, I don't take pleasure in the fact that our catalogs
> are such a mess.
I'd just like to add that the skill of the user must be taken into account in this analysis. For a skilled user of a catalog, very often the catalog is much, much better, e.g. for finding items issued by corporate bodies (and people do want this). Therefore, as the skill goes up, the catalog's utility increases, and at the same time, the evident lack of control in Google becomes increasingly obvious.
I personally love the materials in Google Books, but it is almost impossible to know what is there. I would love to be able to limit by author, personal or corporate. If you use their advanced search, it is completely unreliable. Of course, for information buried inside a book, Google is incomparable (we won't consider the very obvious problems of poor OCR!).
But people naturally gravitate to what seems to be the easiest, which normally translates into the path that takes the least energy, not necessarily the best.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Fri May 08 2009 - 02:58:16 EDT