[Sigia-l] re: the future of search

[James Weinheimer]

> Would you want a librarian who may *not* have heard about urinating rats
or
> flying mexicans to help you or, say, a search engine that can parse 5
> billion docs a la Google to get you into the ballpark in less than a
second?
> It'd be an interesting contest. I'm not sure who'd win at the end of the
> day, for efficiency. Do you?

What reference librarians learn is not the specific answer about urinating
rats, but about how to *find* the answers: Where are the various sources
where I can find the answer to that kind of question? What sort of
information (technical, popular) does this specific source contain? What
other sources are there? Which sources are updated regularly? Which one is
considered the most authoritative?
It turns out that there is a method to do this that people can learn, and
become very good at.

But before you can answer a question, it is necessary to understand it
first, and--as long experience has shown--people rarely understand the
questions they are asking. That's why there is the reference interview,
since it helps both the librarian--and the user--to think more clearly.
Normally, people ask questions such as: I need information on AIDS in New
York.
Obviously, this is not a real question. Only an entirely inept librarian
would immediately go running off and finding all the information available
on AIDS in the State of New York. The librarian must ask further questions,
noting all sorts of things: is the person a scholar? Are they interested in
legal information, medical, biological, economic, social, etc. etc. etc.
Many times, the people themselves don't know and have to think about it.
Slowly, it comes out that they want, e.g. information on a specific bill on
the floor of the NY State legislature.

Search engines do what the inept librarian does: they immediately run off
and begin gathering information together, based on all sorts of strange
algorithms. That is one of the reasons people have so much trouble with
search engines. Or, you get Google, and you get stuck with the most
"popular" sites, which may or may not be what you want.

Jim Weinheimer