Jim - thank you for this post. With limited time, I have not read the
articles you cite, but your post for me is alone worth reading a few
times. What your discussion might come down to the most is what you
might imply by "traditional librarian values", which in your context I
take to partly mean that librarians were largely able to screen out
fraudulent materials (broadly speaking) from their collections in a way
that librarians cannot do with what's available on the web. Thus, users
are directly exposed to this problem, whether they know it and are
equipped to deal with it or not. It seems to me that a basic goal of
bibliographic instruction (BI) in whatever forms (from librarians to
their users) should be to remind web searchers that fraud and extreme
bias are rampant on the web, and that web search engines do not
necessarily screen them out. Those searchers who care can then equip
themselves with a mindset to be on guard for it, and deal with it
appropriately. Of Gorman's eight central values of librarianship
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gorman_(librarian)#Eight_central_va
lues_of_librarianship, to look at one set of values, perhaps commitment
to literacy and learning, rationalism, and democracy are the most
operative for this discussion. Which led me to wonder (as I read your
post) how politically aware most undergraduate students in the U.S. are,
and whether they have enough philosophical or political insight to
adequately detect (increasing?) themes of political bias on the web.
Not everything is politicized, but even authoritative science and
humanities sources can reflect political or philosophical bias. In some
sense the problem is not new. Libraries have long subscribed to some
more or less broad range of editorial bias, especially in their
periodicals, and many novice users may not have appreciated the
differences among various publishing houses or serial titles. However,
the reality is even moreso on the web, given the volume of content and
ease of publication. For example, the web goes way beyond any
preselected list of acceptable journal titles that faculty might suggest
for a specific assignment. Exposure to broader content via the web is
good, presumably, but is there an increasing argument that librarians
ought to be involved in teaching some basics of political literacy also?
Or, likewise, will the next best search engine pre-tag sites with it's
own authoritative (warning) labels such as "liberal", "moderate", and
"conservative", or extremes thereof? If not, web sites that are
currently most popular or most linked to (if that's Google's ranking
algorithm) will probably continue to be taken as most relevant,
reliable, and trustworthy... and perhaps most educational, and most
effective (at getting good grades), all of which may be different
things.
John
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
> Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 8:22 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: [NGC4LIB] Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web
> Content
>
> I would suggest members of this list read a very interesting article:
> Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content (International
> Journal of Communication 4, 2010) by researchers from Northwestern.
> From the abstract:
> "We find that the process by which users arrive at a site is an
> important component of how they judge the final destination. In
> particular, search context, branding and routines, and a reliance on
> those in one's networks play important roles in online information-
> seeking and evaluation. We also discuss that users differ considerably
> in their skills when it comes to judging online content credibility".
>
> I think this report fills a hole in the literature (at least so much
as
> I have found) that has people evaluate "the search result" instead of
> individual websites. Readers of this list probably understand that the
> results you are presented, i.e. the quest to become Google result #1,
> is extemely complex in the process of finding decent information. The
> report's results are not surprising: people do not understand the
> concept of "relevance" or how search engines work. While there is some
> awareness (apparently) that they should go to the "About Us" page, and
> similar parts of a site, it seems that people rarely do so. They
> discuss how people tend to go to the same sites over and over again.
>
> But what interested me most was how people evaluated the search
> results, and what they noted:
> "In some cases, the respondent regarded the search engine as the
> relevant entity for which to evaluate trustworthiness, rather than the
> Web site that contained the information. The following exchange
between
> the researcher and a female social science major illustrates this
point
> well:
> Researcher: What is this Web site?
> Respondent: Oh, I don't know. The first thing that came up"
>
> I have seen this a lot myself, but I don't know if this indicates a
> level of "trust" or rather just the normal human failing of laziness.
I
> have several times cited an excellent report by Marcia Bates, and I
> will again: "Improving User Access to Library Catalog and Portal
> Information" http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/2.3BatesReport6-
> 03.doc.pdf where she writes:
> "Principle of least effort.
> Probably the single most frequently discovered finding on information
> seeking behavior is that people use the principle of least effort in
> their information seeking. This may seem reasonable and obvious, but
> the full significance of this finding must be understood. People do
not
> just use information that is easy to find; they even use information
> they know to be of poor quality and less reliable--so long as it
> requires little effort to find--rather than using information they
know
> to be of high quality and reliable, though harder to find. Research on
> this behavior dates at least as far back as the 1960s, when a major
> study demonstrated that physicians tended to rely on drug company
> salesmen for drug information, rather than consulting the research
> literature. (Coleman, Katz, & Menzel, 1967). Poole reviewed dozens of
> these studies in 1985 (Poole, 1985); Mann has a more recent review
> (Mann, 1992)."
>
> Of course, I am guilty of this behavior myself. It seems we must
accept
> that people will "exert the least effort" to get information, because
> what they get ready to hand will be "good enough". Back when people
had
> no choice except to use well-selected libraries, using the card
catalog
> to find peer-reviewed books was the "easiest" thing to do back then.
> People felt they could more or less "trust" what they read, but
> eliminating all of this selection and controls for materials on the
web
> doesn't mean that the work shouldn't still be done--it just offsets it
> onto the shoulders of the users. So, in the Information Literacy
> classes, we exhort our patrons to read the "About Us" pages, search
out
> information about the author(s), check their credentials and so on,
but
> to believe people will do this is extremely naive. I figure the only
> real result of librarians telling people to do all this work that we
> *know* they won't do, is to just lay (yet another) guilt trip on them.
> After all!
> , we didn't expect them to do this kind of work with printed books
and
> magazines--why should we believe they will do anything else today?
>
> But to be fair to the users, Google does not allow for much filtering
> for these purposes, although recently they have allowed for different
> sorts of the records, e.g. based on time, "Related searches" and that
> inscrutable "Wonder Wheel" which does something I don't understand at
> all! Still, if there were a filter for something like "reliable
> information," I am sure lots of people would click it. According to
the
> Northwestern report, it seems that many users believe that is what
they
> are getting when they click on result #1 in Google or Yahoo: the most
> "reliable". Utlimately, I think this forms part of the popularity of
> some of these Web2.0 tools, people get recommendations from others
they
> feel they can "trust".
>
> Previously, people *believed* they were getting reliable information
> when they pulled a book off a shelf in a library, but in reality, that
> was not guaranteed at all. Something on the shelf might be reviewed,
or
> peer-reviewed, or edited, or not, and the amount of reviewing and/or
> editing may be better or worse. Also, the information could be
> completely obsolete.
>
> I still believe however, that libraries can provide something unique
> that no other entity can today (although somebody probably will do
this
> eventually and may even make tons of money off of it), and that is to
> provide some level of selection based on traditional librarian values.
> The article from Northwestern, I think, supports such a view because
it
> shows that people are concerned about "quality content", it's just too
> difficult and complicated to expect each person to torment themselves
> by going through the process of quality control over and over and over
> again.
> What that system of "reliability" would be that we could supply, I do
> not know.
>
> James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
> Director of Library and Information Services
> The American University of Rome
> Rome, Italy
Received on Tue Jul 27 2010 - 13:02:59 EDT