GoogleTM & Company: Are we
learning the lessons fast enough?
A. Ben Wagner,
Sciences Librarian,
University at Buffalo
RRLC/WNYLRC Joint Workshop
GCC, Batavia, NY – April 8, 2008
Google is:
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Fast & Free (at the cost of ads and our privacy!)
Ubiquitous
Big - ~160,000 servers, 12 new employees/day
No access barriers & no training
Open source code
Forgiving (query & results)
Other than all this, Google has no particular
advantage.
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Librarians generally value:
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Precision
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Marc records
The ideal search
Quality
Careful, deliberate, systematic research –
problems with the “click first, ask questions
later” generation
A Disconnect of Values
If the world was filled with
librarians, Google would
have never gotten off the
ground.
Learning from Google
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Not a great search engine
Secret is that everything is one click away.
(Stephen Abram)
Less is more – the virtue of minimalism
Power features available but often
unnecessary & certainly not emphasized
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http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
Learning from Google Inc.
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Mastered the art of the beta
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‘Good enough’ product is good enough
O.K. to be in beta for a long time
http://www.google.com/options/
http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html
O.K. to fail, because some win big:
Google Earth, Google Book Search
Non-proprietary (open source API)
Are Databases Dead?
Not dead, but many endangered species.
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Niche databases - patrons prefer one-stop
shopping.
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General databases:
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No significant added value beyond a few index
terms.
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Without significant & easily accessed full-text.
A Dying Breed?
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- PubMed vs. for-profit versions of MedLine vendors can not add enough value.
+ Chemical Abstracts adds value - extensive
indexing of chemicals.
+ PsychInfo via Ebscohost: clean, powerful
interface – many refine features (e.g. age
groups, intended audience, methodology.)
Threat #1 to Databases
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Budget cuts force us to consider “free”
alternatives (even the big places.)
Flat out of tricks
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No second tier, low use stuff left
No Peters (staff, facilities) left to rob to pay Paul
(subscriptions)
And free alternatives become more
numerous and more capable by the month.
Forced Choices – Trouble Ahead
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Classic evaluation criteria:
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Quality, scope, level of uniqueness
Concept of “Core”
Use (one advantage of the e-age)
Champions in the organization
But what happens when everything left is
high quality, core, has significant use?
The Ugly Questions
 What
can we live without?
 What are the consequences
of cancelling X?
 i.e., the lesser of evils!
What if?
Cancel?
Books in Print
Rely on?
Amazon
NTIS (Govt. Reports)
Science.gov, etc.
INSPEC
ArXiv.org, Compendex
Academic Search Premier Findarticles.com
PAIS International
Google Scholar
Threat #2 – Journal sites morphing into
Databases
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Journal publishers have the ultimate
prize: full-text.
Consolidation of publishers permits huge
investment in online journal sites.
Individual publisher sites loading up on
value-added features
Value Added Features - Examples
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Links to cited, citing, & “related” references
Current awareness, RSS feeds, & personal
customization
Search results sorting, ranking, and analysis
Added hyperlinks to definitions, etc.
Royal Society of Chemistry – substructure
searching – just announced
Cutting out the “middle man”
Journals cutting out the “middle man”
database by:
 Enhancing finding tools at their sites
 Making article titles, citations, abstracts
“open access” allowing Google Scholar,
Scirus, etc. to harvest the metadata.
But all not rosy for journal publishers
 The
Bogey Man Cometh
 OPEN ACCESS
OA – What’s in it for scholars
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Scholars & institutions starting to realize that:
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Library funding is not and can not keep pace.
Tired of “giving away” their copyright to publishers only to
have library spend $1,000’s to buy it back.
It can work and work big time (physics arXiv preprint site).
Clincher: OA enlarges audience & citation impact by
25%-250% depending on discipline.
http://www.buffalo.edu/~abwagner/OACiteImpactBibliography.
doc
Open Access – NIH News!
National Institute’s of Health Mandate 4/7/2008
 For all work funded in part or in whole by
NIH, authors must submit their peerreviewed manuscripts to PubMed Central
upon acceptance for publication, and
 Made publicly available no later than 12
months after publication
Open Access – Harvard News!
Harvard’s faculty resolution – 2/12/2008
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Mandates that each Faculty member allows
Harvard to make their scholarly articles
available to the public in an open-access
repository.
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Waiver granted only on an article by article
basis upon written request by a Faculty
member explaining the need (opt-out!).
Open Access – ERC News!
Scientific Council of the European Research Council
(ERC) – 1/11/2008
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All publications from ERC-funded research
projects available within 6 months of publication
into an appropriate repository, such as PubMed
Central, ArXiv or an institutional repository.
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Primary data, e.g. protein sequences &
anonymized epidemiological data, available ASAP,
but not later than 6 months after publication.
Threat summary
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Databases threatened by library budgets,
journal publishers, and Open Archive
Initiative (OAI) metadata harvesters.
In turn, journal publishers threatened by
library budgets and open access, especially
grant funding agency mandates.
Switch Gears - Library Databases vs.
the Competition (Google et. al.)
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Stop thinking like librarians – at least while
designing patron systems.
Too many of our systems are designed by
librarians for librarians.
“If we persist in saying that our business is to
provide information, we are standing on the
wrong platform waiting for the wrong train.”
(Abram)
My favorite quote from Stephen Abram
“What we can do is help the user improve the quality of
the question. Helping people articulate what they
are really looking for, teaching them how to assess
the quality of the information they find, showing them
how to more efficiently and effectively search for
information, educating people about the privacy and
other issues associated with ad-driven online
services such as Google - these are core skills that
differentiate librarians.”
We can:
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We can design more forgiving systems.
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How many library systems can find The Journal of
Economics of Business?
We need to go back to the future
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Federated search (but Dialog had DialIndex in the
70’s)
Relevance ranking - Gerald Salton of Syracuse U
tried to tell us that in the early 1960’s.
Play to our strengths, rather than
Google’s strengths.
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People crave human interaction – nothing
beats face-to-face.
Learning: Improve the quality of the question
& the depth of the answer.
Community – commons idea, group & quiet
study place, cafes, etc. People learn by
interacting.
Privacy – Confidentiality
Competing with Google - 1
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Not head-to-head on things such as speed &
factual reference.
Research support – how & why questions
Embedded & Remote Librarians
Learning & Information Commons
Information literacy & skills training
Competing with Google - 2
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Web 2.0 – Avatars, blogs, etc.
Emergencies/Time critical
Raise patron’s retrieval expectations
Present ourselves as solutions to the
information glut (not a new idea!)
Competing with Google - 3
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Establish yourself as a Google expert (opens
doors with patrons)
Promotions like “The library has 1,098
information sources. One of them is the
Internet”
Save Time. Ask a UB Librarian!
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Check out:
http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/pivot/entry.p
hp?id=97
at http://ublib.buffalo.edu
Need interpreter?
Try http://www.netlingo.com/
A Tale of Two Cities
WorldCat vs. WorldCat.org
www.worldcat.org
THE END
Only throw things without sharp edges.
 Questions & Comments
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