When a Search Engine Isnšt Enough, Call a Librarian
February 5, 2004
By JEFFREY
SELINGO
KRIS TUCKERMAN, a reference librarian at the Rockville
Regional Library in Washington's Maryland suburbs, was
answering questions from users of the library's live
Internet chat service recently when a inquiry arrived about
Ross Perot.
"What's the name of the party that Ross Perot
established?"
a user wanted to know.
Ms. Tuckerman checked the Internet for a biography of Mr.
Perot. Then she quickly switched to an electronic database
of biographies to which the library subscribes. But even
after scrolling through several screens of text, she was
unable to come up with a satisfactory answer.
So she turned to a rotating bookshelf next to her desk and
selected a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia.
"Sometimes the old-fashioned sources work the
best," she
said. Within a few minutes she found the answer in the
encyclopedia: the Reform Party.
In all, answering the question took nearly 10 minutes,
partly because of the back-and-forth exchange over the
Internet chat service. "Maybe they could have found the
answer faster on Google, but who knows if it would be
right?" Ms. Tuckerman said. "It's not that I don't
like
Google, but we're the information experts."
For generations, reference librarians have been known as
the source for answers to perplexing questions on almost
any subject. In recent years libraries found other means
for answering questions, offering reference services over
the telephone, by e-mail, and more recently, through
24-hour Internet chat services.
Still, with a widespread public expectation that answers
can be found almost instantly by typing a few words into an
Internet search engine, librarians increasingly find
themselves on the sidelines in the question-answering
business. So they are slowly warming to the idea that they
must educate the public about ways to sort through the
mountain of available information.
"When Google doesn't work, most people don't have a
plan
B," said Joe Janes, an associate professor in the
Information School at the University of Washington in
Seattle, who is teaching a course on Google this quarter.
"Librarians have lots of plan B's. We know when to go
to a
book, when to call someone, even when to go to Google."
While librarians often use search engines themselves, some
say that the public has become too reliant on Web searches,
which may not be the appropriate way to find what they
need. For instance, Google is a fine place to search for
something specific, like biographical information. But for
general information, say on literature or oceanography,
sites that list categories are much better, like Yahoo, or
Web sites favored by librarians, like the Librarians' Index
to the Internet, lii.org, and the Internet Public Library,
www.ipl.org.
What is more, few people scrutinize the information they
find on the Web. A study in 2002 by Google found that 85
percent of search-engine users examine only the first page
of results. On the other hand, librarians say they often
use Google's advanced search features, asking it, for
example, to search only pages that have been updated in the
last three months, or just nonprofit or educational sites,
which they find are sometimes more reliable than commercial
sites.
"People forget that there's no filter on the Web,"
said
Nina Fried, the head of general reference at the Cleveland
Public Library. "Everything you see on the library
shelf
has gone through a tremendous filtering process. Publishers
don't just publish anything. Libraries don't carry just any
old book."
In addition, many libraries subscribe to dozens of
databases on various subjects, none of which are available
free on the Web, said Harriet Shalat, a reference librarian
at the New York Public Library.
"People think if it's not on the Internet, it doesn't
exist," Ms. Shalat said. "I always get questions
that begin
'Can you help me find this on the Internet?' "
At the Baltimore County Public Library, Joe Thompson, a
librarian who also oversees the state's live-chat service,
said he recently had a question about grebes that he first
tried to answer by using the Web. He found several sites
about the birds, but he could not easily verify the source
of their information.
In addition, some sites had not been updated recently,
which was relevant because some grebes are endangered. So
Mr. Thompson turned to one of the library's databases,
Ebsco Animals, which gave him a picture and detailed
information on the birds.
"Good information still costs money, and people forget
that," Mr. Thompson said.
Librarians fear that people are too trusting of the Web,
particularly for health and corporate information, areas in
which some libraries say they have been receiving fewer
inquiries in recent years. In both fields, the accuracy of
the information often depends on its source. In New York
and at many other libraries, cardholders can gain access to
subscriber-only databases - including popular ones like
Medline Plus for medical information and Gale for business
resources - from a remote location.
Another service that librarians provide is one they say
most patrons searching on the Internet need: the ability to
refine a question. Through an interview process, librarians
try to sharpen the way a question is phrased to yield a
better response. That step can save a lot of time, Mr.
Janes said.
"If I type a single word, like architecture. into
Google,
it's going to give me a mess," he said. "I don't
need
information at that stage - I just need help defining my
search."
One benefit of the popularity of Google searches,
librarians say, is that they spend less time answering
quick-reference questions, like, "How many feet are in
a
kilometer?" That leaves more time to spend on harder
questions.
But unless librarians can convince people that their local
library has an edge on Google, communities under pressure
to cut costs may have an easy time reducing the library's
budget. After all, Mr. Janes said, the politicians
"will
think, 'That library is nice, but we can cut them back
because everything is on the Internet.' "