It's interesting that there is an assumption that finding information is easier now than it used to be. Recent research at the University of Washington indicates that college students do not find locating relevant information to be easy at all. The progress report for Project Information Literacy makes for interesting reading http://projectinfolit.org/pdfs/PIL_ProgressReport_2_2009.pdf. One of the points which the researchers make is:
In general, students reported being challenged, confused, and frustrated by the research process, despite the convenience, relative ease, or ubiquity of the Internet. In our sessions, frustrations included the effects of information overload and being inundated with resources, but more. Participants also reported having particular difficulty traversing a vast and ever-changing information landscape. Specifically, participants greatest challenges were related to finding the materials they desired, knew existed, and needed on a "just in time" basis.
I would argue that, while finding data which matches a given set of keywords is quite easy, finding relevant information in the mass of retrieved documents which are allegedly relevant is difficult and getting more so as database size increases. Although "relevance" and "keyword frequency" are currently equated, that equation works better in some disciplines than others. In the sciences and other disciplines with relatively specific and unique vocabularies, keyword searching can work reasonably well. In some of the humanities and social sciences, not so much. As someone who does both cataloging and reference work, I was interested to note that, about a year ago, it became very difficult to locate relevant articles using keyword searches in our general periodical index. Whereas before it had sometimes been possible to help students locate articles without having to teach them how to use the controlled vocabulary, the thesaurus became essential once the database reached a!
certain size. The keyword searches simply retrieved too much irrelevant material.
Teresa Weisser
Ganser Library
Millersville University of Pennsylvania
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 10:46 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Y'all will love this
On Sep 24, 2009, at 10:28 AM, James Weinheimer wrote:
> I still say that we need to find reasons to "make ourselves relevant
> in the
> new environment" (a phrase that I have heard repeated throughout the
> years
> and apparently coming true in California). I think we can, but we
> must think
> outside the box.
IMHO, the way to make ourselves more relevant is to move beyond the
access to information and towards the facilitation of services against
information. Finding information is relatively easy for people to
accomplish. People are drowning in it. Figuring out ways to use it is
more challenging. Examples include compare & contrast, graph,
summarize, annotate, etc. More are here:
http://pln.palinet.org/wiki/index.php/Future_catalogs:_food_for_thought
When people acquire information from us (or others) we need to figure
out ways to make it easier for them to use it for what ever purpose
they desire. Learning. Teaching. Scholarship. Verification. Decision-
making. Writing. Marketing. Estimating. Predicting. Etc.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
Received on Thu Sep 24 2009 - 11:24:47 EDT