On Apr 1, 2016, at 0:31, Cornel Darden Jr. <corneldarde...@gmail.com> 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

Reply via email to