On Apr 1, 2016, at 0:31, Cornel Darden Jr. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> "Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."
>
> Library: "because not everything on the internet is true"
>
> Some people applauded the statement and were like: "yay librarians!"
>
> Others thought it was a very ignorant statement. And many patrons caused a huge backlash. It was interesting as the library responded to the irritated patrons.
While I understand the motivation behind these statements, it also presents as “You’re doing it wrong!”, which is likely part of the reason for the backlash.
Some of the more effective materials that I’ve seen created to communicate this concept effectively show sample search engine results with millions of hits of varying quality juxtaposed against commercial databases with dozens of high quality hits, letting the user draw their own conclusion that they would rather look through a few dozen relevant items than all the chaff from the search engine results.
Don’t tell them they’re doing it wrong, let them see that there’s a better way and let them chose the better option willingly.
--
Andrew Anderson, President & CEO, Library and Information Resources Network, Inc.
http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes | http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes
|