On Aug 29, 2011, at 8:31 AM, Meloni, Julie (jcm7sb) wrote:
> Yes, the algorithm is always being tuned and to some extent personalized; for many popular subjects (people, current events) it's unlikely that two people will get the same results even an hour apart , especially if they're in different geographic locations.
The comment above is very interesting because it begs the question, "To what degree are search results against a database or index expected to be objective?" Our profession has taught us there are right ways and wrong ways to do searching. As a corollary, there must be correct search results and incorrect search results. "If you search the database in the right way, then you will get the correct -- most accurate (precision) and complete (recall) -- results.
Yet our profession does not emphasis the inherent characteristics of the reader. (Increasingly I don't like writing the word "user".) If I put in the word "pizza" into Google, I get pizza things close to my geographic location. Our profession does make such assumptions, and we expect the searcher to qualify the query with a location.
In this way, Google is easier to use and why different research results will be returned for different searchers. Google sort of knows about you. Ironically, a good librarian will also know about their patrons, and they will create search results tailored for the individual. This is is what reference librarianship is all about. Unfortunately we have yet to migrate this expertise into a computerized environment. "That is artificial intelligence and it can't be done. That threatens me; I will loose my job if that comes to fruition. In order to provide that sort of functionality we will have to record characteristics of readers, and that violates privacy." In short, our own professional ethics have limited us, and others, who don't have these beliefs, have literally profited and grown without them.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University of Notre Dame
Received on Mon Aug 29 2011 - 08:55:52 EDT