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Cet article paru sur le site du eContent Institute donne des arguments en faveur des documentalistes dans leur difficile lutte contre les moteurs de recherche. Extraits:
- Price adds that librarians need to take on a greater role as educators. "We haven’t done enough to show people there’s a difference between research and typing two and a half words into a search engine. We haven’t shown them that there are other specialized databases out there that can get them a better, more timely, more authoritative answer.
- Vine. "I think librarians bring to the table an understanding of the nature of publishing. We know that some information might be in books, some might be in journals, others might be found in white papers or government documents. We’re able to take a more structured approach than the average person who doesn’t understand exactly how information happens."
- "Librarians are great analysts," says Information Highways’ Web Search Alert columnist Gwen Harris. "Given the freedom to research a matter they’ll be very thorough and they’ll digest and rearrange and even do some interpretation."
- Price adds that it’s the ability not just to present but to organize information that counts. "Google takes what it can find and throws it into a database — that’s not what I would consider organizing information."
- Says Vine, "every librarian should have deprogramming training. I think librarians are very used to tools made for them by publishers. But those tools are only going to be purchased by libraries because libraries are the only ones that can afford them. Librarians don’t always understand that you also have to evaluate search content on the free Web and they’re not necessarily aware of the various business models that are at stake."
- Armed with the knowledge of the accessible free Web, librarians can better compare it to their specialized databases that might produce results faster, and educate their patrons about these databases.
- Two weeks ago I was talking with a reporter from Reuters and I went through the list of what the public library offers and you could actually hear her jaw drop. She said, ‘this is wonderful, useful, important stuff I can get to for free — why hasn’t anybody told me about this?
- Because the world of information is so much more complex, there’s so much more product out there competing for your eyeballs and if you say ‘I’m not going to give you advice — I’m just going to show you how to do it yourself,’ people are going to walk away because it’s just so overwhelming."
L’article fini par les huits conseils ci-dessous:
1. Reach out to people who haven’t been in a library in many years. Point out that library services go way beyond the four walls of the library building.
2. Develop personal relationships with users. In the same way bankers used to know their customers’ needs, let people know you are "their" information go-to person.
3. Not only tell people we’re here, but why we’re here and precisely what we offer. The phrase "save them time" is a good place to begin.
4. Court people in gatekeeper roles like journalists and teachers and demonstrate what we can offer. In addition, let them know that you’re always ready to assist them. Helping them one or two times can do wonders.
5. Publicize librarian-created services, for example, general Web directories like the Librarians’ Index to the Internet, Infomine, and the Resource Discovery Network. Explain how important the editors of these services consider the quality of information.
6. Remind people that passing up the library might mean they end up paying for material the library offers them for free.
7. Clearly illustrate and demonstrate Google’s limitations but more importantly, demonstrate how you and your library can solve these problems.
8. Remind people that a link to a possible answer is still not an answer
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