2. Ease of self-service

[deborah]

Continued from Openly Available Materials.

2. Ease of self-service

I happen to have a pet peeve, which is that the vast majority of smart people are much worse searchers than they think they are. That probably means I'm a much worse searcher than I think I am, as well, but I know that I'm a better searcher than most other people I see searching. There are standard library outreach practices which are useful for self searching. Better and more universal search front ends can be written for databases. Libraries can offer instruction in searching. Perhaps libraries can petition the major search engines to stop sucking and implement deterministic search, genuine quoted string search, and regular expressions searching, at least for advanced users. *impotent growl*

But how does the library do outreach to users to think they're better at searching than they really are? If the users think they're writing comprehensive and quick searches, they won't spend time learning how to write better ones. Sure, little lessons can be put into the library newsletter, but is there some other form of outreach?

As a corollary to that is the problem Too Much Information. There's so much information available that even if the user write a terrible, inefficient search, she will still gather more information than she could possibly used to solve her problem -- and some of it might even be appropriate and accurate. In this case, is the librarian actually necessary? Assuming the user is competent at vetting the information she has found (and I admit, this is another teachable moment for the librarian), so what if she's not searching in the best and most efficient way? She's found more than she can use. tahnan was saying to me that he doesn't know properly had to use all of his institution's private databases -- but at the same time, he has access to more information than he could possibly need, so he's never bothered to learn.

And is that wrong?

Another corollary is Interdisciplinary Information, which is much harder to find for a user who trusts that his knowledge of his own field is so complete that he doesn't need assistance.

It seems to me that extremely good metadata from well-maintained limited vocabularies that are created by subject specialists in a number of overlapping fields would be key to finding useful interdisciplinary Information. For example, if a computer scientist working on an artificial intelligence project needs to find everything published that could be relevant to her specific project, she might need to look at philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, engineering. That would be made substantially easier if the controlled vocabulary in the search tool had been defined with computer scientists, philosophers, linguistics, mathematicians, and engineers in mind; and if the metadata tagging of the content had been done with all those groups in mind; and if the controlled vocabulary is clearly explained so the user understands what she is looking for.


Continued at instantaneous gratification.

Comments

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

My experience from working with engineers and scientists is that being available via email, phone and in the office when they are likely to need help will, over time (and my role model in this had been doing it for over 25 years) cause them to believe that even though they can find things, it's far easier to throw themselves on the librarian's mercy and thus get Instant Gratification, which see.

Given that the publishing world makes the online Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game look simple, people who use complex resources routinely can be taught to ask for help if you can get them once or twice.

But them, my target population was over 50 and thus grew up with the idea that there was probably 'some woman over there' who could help them and thus avoid wasting their valuable time.

YES, the librarian is necessary. that fact should be part of education.

[colorwheel.livejournal.com]

it seems to me that the earlier people realize that searching is far more than googling, the better. in this day and age when the wee ones are online from the beginning, their teachers should be teaching them to be the best searchers they can, but also about the vastness and complicatedness of the info out there. i'm thinking second grade, third grade. this doesn't help you at all.

but undergraduates should also be taught this stuff, as soon as they get to college. maybe some kind of demonstration as part of libe orientation? i'm thinking something sparkly, that shows materially how many facets of searching the librarians have. something that shocks the watchers into "omg i better come to the libe sometimes and not just sit at home googling." ON BEYOND GOOGLE, ala dr seuss.