Laval wrote "...What we in the future shall have librarians for ( if
anything ) is another question... "
Tough question. Why do we need librarians?
Do people come to libraries to get a question answered? Sometimes, although
I'd guess less frequently than they used to.
How about to ask an expert? Unless they're asking a library-science related
question, the experts probably don't work at the library. People can ask an
expert directly by trying to find them on the internet, i.e. doctors
participating in online interactions with people who aren't their patients
in the traditional sense.
People doing research want answers for their questions, certainly, but part
of what they want is to engage. They don't just want to be told an answer by
an expert, they want to formulate their own opinion based on input from lots
of experts. I think this type of person is the one mostly likely to be still
using libraries - if all they wanted was a fact-check or a doctor's email
address, they could have stopped coming to the library long ago. Probably
should have stopped coming, if they had decent internet access and really
only wanted these limited things.
If I have a question about the Salem witch trials, I can ask a bunch of
historians and wait for an answer. There's probably also a decent bit of
information about the topic on Wikipedia. But if I'm interested in the
trials, and what it was like, that doesn't boil down to a question that
someone can answer. I want to read The Crucible. I want to read histories
about the trials. I want to read original documents that come from the time
period, with some helpful annotations to explain the bits that don't make
sense to me. I want to get into the information about this topic and swim
around. A librarian can help me do that.
I don't know if this is useful at all, but the other reason to ask a
librarian is that they're cheap, easy to find (how far from that desk are
they really likely to stray?), and they have to be polite to you. It would
suck if you're into the witch trials and you send emails to a bunch of
experts, and they all ignore you or brush you off. They can't put as much
time and effort into answering every hobbyist's questions as they will into
publishing (however, wherever they do it), and it wouldn't make sense if
they did. But when I used to do a lot of reference and instruction, I
always tried to get across to the users (students, in my case) that we're
there to help them. Save the time of the reader, and all that.
This is just my two cents.
Joe Montibello, MLIS
Library Systems Manager
Dartmouth College
603.646.9394
joseph.montibello_at_dartmouth.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Laval Hunsucker [mailto:amoinsde_at_YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2011 4:33 PM
Subject: 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:
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/
Received on Thu Feb 10 2011 - 09:43:22 EST