Open Sources

Here's a cool idea! Make searching better than Google by having a real, live person help you! Wow that's innovation! That's really forward-thinking! That's really ... exactly what libraries do, and have done for years. By phone, by chat, in person. Whatever works.

Why is it that so many people still don't think of the library when they get frustrated doing a Web search? I guess that's what the OCLC Perceptions report was all about - though it annoyed me when I read it, thinking they were dismissing people's genuine interest in books.

I wonder if the problem isn't that libraries are local, and Google is everywhere, always? So many libraries have scaled back on hours and can't answer reference questions exept for the few hours a week they're open - unless they pay to be part of a chat reference service, which costs money and hasn't, so far as I know, been widely adopted by users enough to make a strong case to the bean counters who closed the library in the first place.

If we can't be there to provide reference on line or in person, or are only there thirty hours a week, most of them when people are at work, we'll have a hard time convincing people helping them find information is what we do.

Gee, maybe this guy's idea makes sense after all ....