Re: Watson - IBM's "question-answering" machine (potential implications for libraries?)

I don't exactly follow you, Jim. You wrote :  

> But questions that demand more thought and require a 
> deeper  understanding will (I hope!) always be asked and 
> I don't see how a  computer can answer those. 
 
But wait, Thomas did write ( and you even quoted him ) 
"To get a question answered you look it up on the web or 
you ask an expert." And that latter resource is where one 
would ( and surely should ) go precisely in cases of, as you 
put it, "questions that demand more thought and require 
a deeper  understanding". The hope you here express ( that 
such questions will continue to be put ) will certainly not 
prove futile, but I can't in my wildest fantasies imagine why 
anyone would choose to put such questions to a librarian 
rather than to an expert.

Isn't that what Thomas was more or less already -- and quite 
rightly -- saying ?  He wasn't positing that computers will be 
answering *that* kind of questions ;  that's, among other 
things, what we've got ( and have always had ) experts for.

What we used to have *librarians* for is likewise fairly well 
known. What we in the future shall have librarians for  ( if 
anything )  is another question.  I've in the past offered my 
own thoughts on that, for whatever they may be worth, also 
on this list. So have others. They can be found in the archives.



- Laval Hunsucker
   Breukelen, Nederland 




----- Original Message ----
From: Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Tue, February 8, 2011 9:35:39 AM
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Watson - IBM's "question-answering" machine (potential 
implications for libraries?)

Thomas Krichel wrote (concerning http://nyti.ms/g6J9Xe):
<snip>
  B.G. Sloan writes

> What if we had sophisticated affordable "question-answering"
> machines in ten years? What would that mean for libraries?"

Why would that make any change? The idea that people go
to see librarians to get questions answered is already
many years out of date, isn't it? To get a question
answered you look it up on the web or you ask an expert.
</snip>

This  is absolutely correct: the future is with us now! The number of  reference 
questions asked has tumbled and there is no reason to think  that this will 
change anytime soon.

Of course, almost no question  has a single "correct" answer, except for 
questions such as, how tall  is Mt. Everest, or, Lincoln belonged to the 
Democratic Party--true or  false? Almost every substantive question has several 
possible answers.  For example, a question I was asked once pops into my mind: 
Does  communism lead inevitably to Stalinism? Hard to answer with a yes or no!  
There is no single "correct" answer.

So, the traditional  reference questions termed "ready-reference" are probably 
already gone  from the reference desk. But questions that demand more thought 
and  require a deeper understanding will (I hope!) always be asked and I  don't 
see how a computer can answer those. The traditional library ideal  that the 
librarian furnishes the searcher with information--in an  unbiased manner--(or 
at least so far as is humanly possible) will still  be needed, so that people 
can examine various ways of looking at an area  of concern to them, and each can 
finally arrive at his or her own,  personal version of "the truth".

How librarians can help people  achieve this sort of ideal in a networked, 
virtual environment remains  to be seen however, but this would seem to me to be 
some of the more  interesting of the various challenges we face.

James Weinheimer  j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 258
fax-011 39 06 58330992
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/