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:

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.

Librarians generally value:

Precision– 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

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– http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Learning from Google Inc.

Mastered the art of the beta– ‘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. Niche databases - patrons prefer one-stop

shopping. General databases:

– No significant added value beyond a few index terms.

– Without significant & easily accessed full-text.

A Dying Breed?

- 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

Budget cuts force us to consider “free” alternatives (even the big places.)

Flat out of tricks– 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

Classic evaluation criteria:– 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? Rely on?

Books in Print 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

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

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 ComethOPEN ACCESS

OA – What’s in it for scholars

Scholars & institutions starting to realize that:– 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 peer-reviewed 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

Mandates that each Faculty member allows Harvard to make their scholarly articles available to the public in an open-access repository.

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

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.

Primary data, e.g. protein sequences & anonymized epidemiological data, available ASAP, but not later than 6 months after publication.

Threat summary

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.)

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:

We can design more forgiving systems.– How many library systems can find The Journal of

Economics of Business?

We need to go back to the future– 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.

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

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

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

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!

Check out: http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/blog/pivot/entry.php?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