On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 3:51 PM, James Weinheimer
<weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It is the article and Google itself that are questioning the usefulness of
> the traditional Google algorithm, and this is based on companies utilizing
> SEO. The purpose of a company on the web is to drive as much web traffic to
> their pages as possible, but this is not the searcher's purpose. The
If the library does enough seo on its catalogue pages they should come
higher up the results
This is all I do, and my seo is limited to reading google
recommendations and not collecting incoming links, they grow
organically if your site has useful info.
> searchers want to see resources that are as closely aligned to their
> searches as possible. These are different ideas and purposes. I can't blame
Relevant data on your web page will trump spam. But there will always
be difficulty with a common term.
Here users can help themselves with better search terms.
> websites for trying to get as much traffic as possible, using whatever tools
> they can because they are all about revenue. But from the searcher's
> viewpoint, I don't want to see a bunch of junk, such as the pages in the
> eHow site from Demand Media, as discussed in the article from Tech Republic.
I hate those spam sites too, google is looking at page quality too.
>
> Library selection is designed to avoid the waste of time for the searchers
> by hiring experts to pre-select useful and reliable resources. The entire
> process is open with Collection Development policies and so on. Library
> selection certainly has its own problems, but in any case its underlying
> purposes are totally different from sites such as Google.
One still has to find the right library or archive. And that
library/archive needs a good open access policy
Selection often means throwing older books, just the stuff I want to refer too!
>
> You ask some great practical questions, e.g. why should the user come to us
> in the first place? Libraries should have been dealing with these issues
> from a long time back, but unfortunately, it seems to me as if they have
> continued to concentrate on printed resources. I understand why, since they
> are already dealing with overwhelming numbers of materials and adding on
> more seems impossible. Libraries already have catalogs online and these
> should be revamped to become more useful for all kinds of people. Still, I
> think librarians offer services that are found nowhere else and these could
> be leveraged somehow. One part of that is selection, although it would have
> to be adapted to web-scale.
>
> The problem with everyone becoming the "internet librarian" is spam. For
> instance, click spam, where people are hired into sweatshops to click on ads
> all day(! Called Click Fraud in Wikipedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud) can lead to huge profits. I do not
> see why trusting the +1 button would be any different.
One IP address clicking (or a subnet of a dynamic ip block of an isp)
+1 many times will be obvious and easily discounted.
Any gaming of ones own +1 buttons will be easily seen in my opinion,
(says me waiting for his first +1 click)
> My own opinion is that we are still at the very beginning of the internet
> and web and it is very difficult to see what will happen. Some things that
> seem absolutely impossible today will be enacted--somehow. This is just like
I think the web is very usable but some of the older users just dont
realise how to leverage it.
> at the very beginnings of printing, nobody foresaw the changes that would
> happen in the future: either the incredible societal changes that took
> place, or the huge number of people employed in all the various aspects of
> bibliography: from authors to editors to publishers to printers to
> distributors to libraries and bookstores, plus all of the spinoffs:
> increased paper making, transportation, storage and on and on. It is
> practically impossible to predict what will happen in the future of the web.
>
> --
> James Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
> First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
> Cooperative Cataloging Rules:
> http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
>
One thing that I have noticed is after failure to find something out
there in library and archive land, I have had a search in my own stack
and found relevant information, just proving to me how important the
catalogue is, noting just the first few authors in a book just does
not cut it imo.
Dave Caroline
Received on Tue Nov 01 2011 - 13:44:38 EDT